Still Trying to Convince Jim to Go Online

August 23, 2010

Jim, you need to fill out the parts of this page. Nothing anyone else can write will do it justice. For now, while nothing else is written, I am glad to be part of creating this memory of your classroom. Having had a great number of teachers, you where the teacher in whose class I experienced the most vivid moments. From visiting the school board, to learning about cognac, painting, public speaking and sex, you broadened our minds to new horizons. It was in your class that a class period could vanish in daze but be remembered longer than a day. Thank you for believing in us, as people, and instilling in as a desire to feel, absorb life and live an adventure. You shared your life and insights with us and left in us an array of unforgettable moments.

Hopefully through the passing of time, many of us will live out your suggestions. Many of us will travel, pick passionate teachers rather than subjects, stay in shape, enjoy our lives, and threat others with the dignity and respect that you showed to us.

Thank you Owens! Best wishes to you and Park.

You are one of a kind.

Enrolling in or visiting Mr. Owens classroom at Gainesville High School is a trip worth making. For those that enroll in his class, these students learn not just academic material, but various lifelong lessons through a nonconventional curriculum.

————

September 8, 2010

O, I hope you are doing well. Things in Minneapolis are starting to turn a bit chili. At least last week was a bit colder than usual. I hope the first two weeks went well. Here the school semester is about to start. Hopefully it is worthwhile going back to school. In some ways I which I had obtained a different experience before returning to the institution.

Jim, I have been thinking of the idea of recording your class and I am planning on emailing the tv production teacher this week as you suggested. However, I wanted to hear from you what appears most feasible. More than anything aside from the pedagogy aspects and implications of information and communication technologies, it would be nice to simply create an area where student can remember and revisit the sanctuary. With that in mind I wanted to hear your opinion. I was thinking that perhaps we could start by digitalizing previous class materials. Would that be possible?

Among changes that are taking place, I recently started working with a professor who specializes in service-learning. ZI truly enjoyed becoming more familiar with this literature. The integration between teaching and serving provides an avenue for students to make a direct impact in the community. It reminds me a lot of SURE and later STOMP, and how at times students can develop a project and bring about change.

The goal of the class I am working with him in developing for next semester focuses on Global Change and Youth Leadership. In Argentina they have a very successful project called Solidaridad. The government since 1997 and more recently in 2006 started to promote the integration of service within the school curriculum. Since 1997 the president has given an award to the most accomplished examples. My goal as an RA is to help him set up this class and help teach it in the spring. We will also be travelling to Argentina so that the undergraduate students can themselves work hand in hand with some of these groups in Argentina and learn

Educacion Gratuita – Tratando de Convencer Profesores 

Agosto 23, 2010

Educación para todos – Una alternativa de educación gratuita que puede servir para complementar a la educación tradicional, para proveer de educación a gente que no pueda atender a una Universidad tradicional y

Este programa se enfoca por ahora en individuos que viven en países extranjeros que hablen español. Grabando estos videos utilizando

Tomando en cuenta la naturaleza wiki innata de la red. (donde todas las personas quisieran tener una voz y aportar a la acumulación general de la cultura).

Contáctanos

El hecho, es que con la acumulación de diversas versiones de cada clase, tenemos que ser realistas y darnos cuenta de que en un futuro en el internet los estudiantes no solo podrán ver la clase que grabo el profesor en la mañana, si no que también abran muchas otras versiones de la clase disponibles para servir de tutores para el estudiante. Todas las personas somos distintas y demostramos distintas preferencias no solo con la ropa y la música, si no que demostramos aptitudes distintas para distintos tipos de aprendizaje. No todos los zapatos lees cabe el mismo pie. Por ello, porque no ayudar a que se desarrolle esta recolección de clases y conferencias para que estén disponibles a todas las personas que tengan el acceso al internet.

Este ano, la profesora Tania Cordova, profesora titular y jubilada de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, podrá nuevamente aportar a Venezuela con su especialidad, su tutoría y extensivos conocimientos en el área de la química orgánica y computacional.

Por problemas económicos, políticos y sociales durante los últimos anos, no solo en Venezuela sino en otras áreas de Latinoamérica, han dejado a sus países para ir a terrenos mas verdes. O a un lugar donde pueden desarrollarse intelectualmente o realizar sus sueños de ser un deportista olímpico o profesional.

Las razones porque la gente emigra son muchas y diversas, y tienen una amplia tradición histórica. Desde que el hombre salió de África, el se ha trasladado de campo a campo, de colina a colina, de montana a montana, atravesando ríos y mares y poblando seis continentes y transcurriendo los 4 océanos.

Sin embargo, aunque el hombre se han trasladado de un país a otro, el hombre, principalmente en su primera generación, se mantiene fuertemente atado a su cultura. Aquella cultura la cual se define principalmente por el lenguaje.

Latinoamérica es una con

Acerca de EGV – Educacion Gratuita en Videos

August, 23, 2010

Esta organización fue creada con el propósito de promover el OpenCourseWare en español por Alfonso Sintjago y Ellie Sintjago. Alfonso Sintjago es actualmente un estudiante de doctorado en educación de la Universidad de Minnesota en los Estados Unidos en el área de educación comparativa. Ellie Sintjago termino recientemente su maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos en la Universidad de Florida, Estados Unidos.

Al ver que existían muchos recursos de universidades altamente reconocidas de manera gratuita en el internet, incluyendo 1800 clases publicadas por el MIT, pero las cuales en su gran mayoría existen solo en el idioma ingles, y que a la vez existía un número mucho más limitado de clases disponibles en español, se propusieron la meta de reducir esta diferencia y contactar a profesores universitarios para promover la grabación y distribución de clases en video de calidad universitaria en español, gratis por el internet.

Utilizando espacios virtuales y canales en línea gratuitos para subir videos en el internet en sitios como Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo entre otros, se propusieron a difundir material educativo en multiples canales a la vez para aumentar el número de personas que los pueda encuentra y beneficiarse de este material educativo.

Hoy en día, muchas personas con acceso a internet están cada día aumentando la cantidad de material disponible de manera gratuita para cualquier persona, ya sea a través de wikis, blogs, ebooks, programas, archivos de texto, audio, imágenes o videos. Desde la evolución a la Red 2.0, estas nuevas herramientas han sido utilizadas de manera incremental mundialmente por educadores para complementar la educación tradicional. Utilizando estos nuevos recursos, grades innovadores como el creador de Khan’s Academy, Salman Khan y sus más de 1600 videos en Youtube.com han mostrado que es posible complementar la educación de muchas personas en el internet por medio de videos gratuitos.

A su vez, mas y mas universidades han publicados texto, imágenes y videos de sus foros y sus clases en el internet de forma gratuita a través de Youtube EDU o ITunes U. Sin embargo, la división digital entre los países desarrollados y los países en desarrollo continúa siendo tangible, y son mayormente los países desarrollados los que promueven y distribuyen OpenCourseWare. Aunque la división digital se reduce cada día,  el uso de la tecnología por la industria educativa en español es inferior al uso dado a la tecnología por los países desarrollados. Es nuestra meta reducir esta diferencia a través de la iniciativa EGV.

A través de EGV esperamos poder afectar positivamente esa división e incrementar el OpenCourseWare en español. Con el tiempo, más y más cursos estarán disponibles gratuitamente en el internet. Los motivamos a que se unan a lograr esta meta y aumenten las herramientas educativas para los estudiantes del futuro.

Mission EGV

August 22, 2010

EGV, Educación Gratuita en Videos tiene como misión promover el crecimiento del material de OpenCourseWare, o material libremente accesible de educación de nivel universitario a cualquier persona con acceso a internet en español. Mientras que el OpenCourseWare se ha expandido rápidamente en años recientes, la mayoría del crecimiento ha tomado lugar a través de material publicado en Ingles. Aunque el español es el segundo lenguaje más hablado en el mundo y hay un número creciente de usuarios de internet en países de habla hispana, las tecnologías de las Red 2.0 todavía no se han expandido a la educación del público en general.

Dentro del OpenCourseWare en Español, actualmente hay una cantidad limitada de material en campos como las ciencias naturales, la ingeniería, la arquitectura, entre otras. Como uno de los idiomas mas hablados en el mundo, es importante incrementar el acceso de esta información en español.

EGV espera que en el futuro, estudiantes podrán elegir que profesores escuchar en línea para o suplementar sus estudios o servir como el método primario de diseminación de información educativa de alto nivel. Todos los estudiantes tienen diferentes maneras de aprender y estudiar. Mientras unos aprenden principalmente por el estimulo visual, otros internalizan el material con más facilidad al escuchar y otros kinesteticamente. EGV cree que al incrementar el acceso a distintos instructores enseñando diversos temas o el mismo tema pero con un estilo de enseñanza distinto, los estudiantes van a tener más opciones para encontrar un tema de su interés y encontrar una serie de videos que utilice el estilo de aprendizaje que más les llega.

El objetivo de este proyectó es disminuir la falta de material y promover el desarrollo de material de OpenCourseWare en español. Para hacer esto una realidad, este proyectó pretende trabajar en equipo con profesores universitarios, vigentes o retirados, para que ellos puedan compartir su conocimiento y experiencia académica con el resto del mundo.

Education – Quotes

August, 18, 2010

Studying During the Summer: Preventing the Summer Slide

August, 15, 2010

In a recent MPR broadcast, the audience discussed the implications of a research project by Johns Hopkins sociology Professor Karl Alexander concerning the importance of eliminating the summer gap and finding a way to increase the school year so that students can practice math, science and reading year round. This would prevent students from suffering from the :summer slide” or losing a substantial portion of what they had learned during the previous school year, having then to be re-taught this material the first weeks of the following school year.,

The study argues that the “summer slide” accounts for two thirds of the achievement gap forninth grade students as the disadvantaged students are not continuing to study or have enriching experiences during the summer equivalent to their more advantaged classmates from elementary school until ninth grade. While statistics show that students improve at the same rate as their peers during the school year independent of the students’ background, a gap develops during the summer months. Better off children appeared to take greater advantage of public services such as libraries, parks, as well as taking more books home than at-risk students. Johns Hopkins University has written extensively on this topic, having started the study in 1982 when it began to follow 800 students throughout their academic careers. Yet, despite their conclusive findings, it is much more difficult to successfully implement a solution.

During the current recession, schools have been faced at times with difficult decisions such as whether to drop subjects, fire teachers, drop afterschool and summer programs, or even reduce the school week from five week days to four days (a Monday through Thursday week), as has been the case in some areas of Hawaii, California, and is being considered in a number of other locations. Faced with the current economic climate, how then will the state meet the goals of increasing access, quality, and effectiveness of education? Some districts in Minnesota also discussed possibly shortening the school week to four days in some locales. Facing these issues, how will America meet the goals of having 60% of its students graduate from college by 2020 and once again lead the world in graduation rates? (the USA is currently ranked 12 in graduation rates according to a College Board study of 36 countries).*

However, according to a recent article by Education Innovating (8/11/2010), maybe the situation is not as dire as it first appears. While the cuts decrease the productivity of education, the article argues that some of these changes may, in certain cases, not be highly detrimental and, in addition, may be providing a space for innovation to flourish as parents search for alternatives. New spaces and online learning options have allowed some communities to provide their children with an alternative to the traditional educational system and a space for students to explore and continue their education in other fields.

Yet, various well respected and helpful education programs have recently been cut in Minnesota and elsewhere. Programs such as TRIO, other government run programs and non-profits are increasingly competing for scarce funds and many of these programs are the ones that focus on decreasing the achievement gap. In the end, hopefully innovation will triumph, some web 2.0 technologies are promising in their innovative approach and cost decreasing ability, yet it will also take community involvement and a concerted effort to ensure that every student has the opportunity to develop their talents regardless of their social class.

* – Research in Brief: Summer Can Set Kids on the Right or Wrong Course http://www.summerlearning.org/resource/collection/CB94AEC5-9C97-496F-B230-1BECDFC2DF8B/Research_Brief_02_-_Alexander.pdf

* – Obama aims to lift college graduation rates, but his tools are few http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0809/Obama-aims-to-lift-college-graduation-rates-but-his-tools-are-few

* – The big payoff of the four-day school week: Unplanned innovation? http://www.educationinnovating.org/2010/08/big-payoff-of-four-day-school-week-unplanned-innovation A family enjoying a trip to a Minnesota Zoo – Photo taken from Flickr under Creative Commons license – attributed to acopperpenny

OpenCourseWare – A Free Education for All

August, 9, 2010

MIT OpenCourseWare was recently recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for their work in providing free educational material to anyone with internet access in over 1800 courses and was named the recipient of the Scientific Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE).

USA now 12^th in number of graduates: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/opinion/07herbert.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Reassessing Traditional Education (Part 1 of a Series – The Problem)

August 7, 2010

Having recently finished her M.A. degree from a well respected university in an area studies program where she obtained a 4.0 GPA, received an assistantship during her studies and very positive letters of recommendations, among other accolades, my wife is now having great difficulties in finding a job. Unfortunately, like a large number of recent college graduates, she has after all limited work experience. Now 26 years of age, she is worried about having lost valuable time completing a master instead of increasing her work experience.

Part of her difficulty in finding a job may be related to her field of study. However, recent statistics show that up to 17% of college graduates are currently unemployed and competition is stiff for every job opening. Many of the individuals that she and I went to school with are experiencing the same difficulty, a large percentage of the students are currently unemployed or underemployed, and most of the students that have found employment are either back either continuing for a PhD study, or working in a different area.

The current job market shows that a large number of graduates are unemployed and that most open positions require previous work experience. It is because of these common difficulties that a reassessment of the traditional education system should be more fervently discussed. As traditional learning institutions hold less and less a monopoly of information and anyone with access to the internet is able to learn about almost any subject through a free e-book, by open courseware, online forums, or in a wiki style. Shouldn’t traditionally education institutions increasingly become more concerned in making sure students obtain work experience while they are at the university rather than focusing on the accumulation of knowledge? Shouldn’t work experience in their field of study increasingly become part of the traditional curriculum and universities have more direct connections with businesses and other outputs for their graduates?

It is my opinion that these changes absolutely necessary to some if not most field of study. In a series of articles I will address ways in which this can be accomplished and how by modifying traditional education, we could have a better trained, more entrepreneurial and productive work force and a lower rate of unemployment. I invite you to follow me and debate with me through a series of articles as to how this can be accomplish, as well as how we can use ICT, online education, and other modern tools to make college education more successful and a smoother transition for graduates into the work force.

Learn by Teaching – Attending a Workshop at the Minnesota Literacy Council

August 5, 2010

One of the best ways for a person to continue their education is by reinforcing what they learned previously and increasing their expertise by teaching. The Minnesota Literacy Council offers just that. In a state where it is estimated that 25 to 50% of immigrants are refugees and more than 230,000 adults cannot read or write, there is a constant need to instruct newcomers in English and American customs.[1]

For the large Somali and Hmong community, and various other nationalities, particularly those that use a different alphabet, learning English can be a very difficult task. In order to help volunteers meet this challenge, the Minnesota Literacy Council offers ESL training courses on a monthly basis. The course takes place over four weekdays and started this Monday for the month of August. The dates for the training this month are August 2, 4 and August 9, 11 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. The classes have a total cost of 30 dollars but, if needed, there are scholarships available to cover the cost for students with limited resources currently working, or about to start working, as ESL instructors.

The program teaches the instructors how to effectively apply certain teaching methods for students with different levels of English proficiency, as well as stressing the importance of accommodating different learning styles and motivations. The instructors are encouraged to relate the materials to their students with class activities such as learning the parts of an employment forms as well as slowly increasing the students’ English proficiency through the use of repetition, and the use of songs to practice vocabulary.

The program also emphasizes the need to better understand immigrants and their circumstances. Moving to the United States, many immigrants made difficult decisions such as leaving their career, friends, their country and other elements of their culture behind. They had to leave their countries, at times escaping eminent physical danger and persecution. Most immigrants come to America in the pursuit of happiness and the “American Dream.” A place where there is a respect for the constitution, freedom and justice. Yet it is very important, as it was with previous immigrant groups, that immigrants effectively learn English and understand the laws and values of the American civilization.

With a delicate economic outlook and a continuing recession, many Americans are increasingly in favor of stronger restrictions of immigration. However, it is important to remember that in 1910, immigrants represented 14.7 percent of the population while they represent 12.6% today. In addition, in 1890, the instructions for the Minnesota elections were given in 9 languages in comparison to only 5 the last elections (English, Hmong, Spanish, Somali, Russian and Vietnamese) In addition, The United States has fewer foreign born residents as a percentage of the population than countries such as Canada, Australia and Switzerland.

Volunteering to teach an ESL class is a way of helping these immigrants to assimilate. If you have the time available consider teaching an ESL class and attending a Minnesota Literacy Council workshop. For more information visit their website: www.theMLC.org or call 651-645-2277. The slideshow contains pictures from the August workshop and additional information.

Convincing a Friend to Create His ED Channel

August 2, 2010

Jim,

The book arrived! Received it a couple of days ago. Thank you for the gift, it is much appreciated. I will try to read it the upcoming days. I greatly enjoyed an interview to John Taylor Gatto that was available on youtube.com. His success as a teacher is impressive.

I, myself have been looking at the parallels between critical pedagogy and web 2.0 recently and the growth of online open education such as OpenCourseWare. Plans for free creative commons textbooks and free education material on the internet is on the rise. ITunes U and YouTube EDU are only two examples.

Jim, I am interested in free online education and its promise for developing countries. My opinion is that technology should not replace the teacher but rather serve as another medium by which to instruct children and complement traditional education program.

With this in mind, I felt, what else can be done to improve online education and what are the implications for developing countries? Thinking of current developments in technology and education, I am interested in uploading educational material to the internet, and hoping that in the future, students can, through a basic search, find a number of instructors teaching a certain course available freely on the internet. Perhaps students will be able to choose from 20 or more different Spanish one classes to follow and find a teacher that suits their learning style. This free online diversity would be another tool aside from libraries, that would be available free of charge to everyone. In a way, it would be an education video web Wikipedia.

Thinking about this as a development project, I believe in the future, as access to the internet increases, the availability of a diversity of free education lectures and teaching videos taught in languages of developing countries would help diminish the information and education gap between developed and developing countries. Following this project, my mom will record a university class of organic chemistry taught in Spanish this upcoming semester. I am currently arranging which programs, software, and hardware to use. But once the material is online it will be permanently free of charge to complement traditional education and offer an alternative to distance education. After this, we will try to convince other retired university professors to record their classes and also upload them on the internet free of charge. The objective is that like a wiki, it will snow ball.

Currently universities such as MIT have applied this model through their OpenCourseWare material. Some Spanish universities are part of the consortium, but there is no concerted effort. Helping in any way to bridge the north / south education divisions is worthwhile. It is also another way, aside from remittances, by which Latin American migrants can help improve their country’s education

Regarding your class, while it is in English, I am very interested in recording your lessons and also looking at your pedagogy and the methods you utilize to reach your students. Perhaps similar to Gatto, you developed strong connections with your students. For me, your teaching methods were incredible effective. I remember vividly many lessons from your class. From the carpenter chef, to your friend and role model the bird?, to your tales of visiting France, teaching us about paintings and realism, Muhammad Ali – When we were Kings, Snitch, diary writing exercises, speaking at the school board, self-teaching lessons, among  others, including public speaking, and how to drink cognac. More so than other teachers, you not only taught individuals and these subjects, but more importantly you taught us to question authority, to find ourselves, and a countless number of lifelong lessons. Though placing your videos on the internet, I hope other students will have the privilege of attending the sanctuary.

I believe, overtime, this will happen and a number of students will take advantage of your videos. Like you previously mentioned, a student should not simply pick subjects to study but pick passionate teachers who enjoy teaching their subject, because if they have an interest and love for what they teach, you will enjoy it and more likely remember it.

You have a lot to teach Owens, you lived a life of travel, and you have been teaching about your experiences for over a decade. Recording it, will allow your current and previous students to rewind and revisit your class as an online journal, and perhaps even you could reach future generations and allow them to take part in and enjoy your class. Technology has become and will continue to become cheaper. At the moment 10 minute clips can be placed on the internet, and I, or someone else, would have to divide the clips into 10 minute pieces, but it is likely that soon, that will no longer be a limitation, as technology advances and decreases in price. This project would allow a class of yours to be frozen in time, and it is, in my opinion, a worthwhile experiment.

Recording your class could allow other teachers to observe your pedagogy methods, and perhaps bring insight into what is a successful teacher. Student teachers could also use the videos to reinforce their philosophy and find that yourpedagogy may be best suited for their audience and personality. Practicing teachers will be able to use them to find ideas. While right now there is not a collection of teacher classes freely accessible online, it is my opinion that this will eventually happen and that the information will be properly categorized and easy to access.

I am not sure if your methodology is transferable to online education, but it’s worth exploring. There is a chance, whether we like it or not, that over time, more and more classes will be recorded and students may be able to pick a particular teacher, due to his teaching style through online videos, or perhaps other teachers will be able to look at their colleagues online and learn which techniques are more effective.

If you decide to record your classes, what should we record? It depends.  We could start by placing part of your class online (we could have a sanctuary channel), or perhaps even the whole class could be recorded, or maybe you prefer to pick and chose, that would be up to you. All could be recorded at first and then edited.

In addition, the project could also expand horizontally if you wanted to. We could expand your class to an interactive online learning audience – with Nings, Edu 2.0, YouTube Edu, Podcasts, Grouply among others, it can be exported into different online class based internet sites. The newest one which appears promising, and has the support of various Ivy League colleges, is Nixty.com. These places use blogs, etc. You do not use homework as a tool which would make it easier to set up, but the sites allow for homework and quizzes if needed..

Also new development will come along, and the material can be transported to a better engine in the future. Once the material is recorded, it is available for potentially endless number of uses. As students become more wired, I thought I would be good to see how best to utilize some of these technologies. Using your class as an experiment could serve as another example of how education is being transformed, what can be transformed, and what should not be changed.

As you have mentioned before, there are intrinsic benefits in secluding yourself from technology such as a reduction in distractions. Yet, technology has also brought interesting changes and possibilities. Today, most famous books from the Middle Ages and before, and most other classics are now open source and available to everyone with a kindle, iTunes, or basic internet access.

Perhaps this year we could record just a couple of lessons and go from there. The lessons you feel most comfortable having on video and perhaps placing some of it online, whatever you consider prudent. Also, it would be great if we could record Parks as well. The costs are minimal, practically zero, if there are two cameras available and the data is stored in a cloud manner. (Uploading the videos on a regular basis as to prevent the files from filling to much space on the hard drives). I am working on the logistic at the moment, and there may be some limitations.

Anyway, I hope you consider this idea. We could start small. It is usually best. But particularly if a couple of students can get on board, it may not be too complicated. I am looking at video compression, video hosting sites, and video editing tools, to have a better grip on the logistics. I know ways in which to do it now and I have explored the options before, but there are some recent start ups that may offer better options.

Thank you again for the book Jim. I truly appreciate it,

Alfonso