Tuesday, September 28, 2010

EDUCATION NATION! (Tuesday)

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STILL NOT A "DIME" FROM RTTT

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Practice: We’re in it together

Most of what we know, remember, and use, we didn’t learn by teachers and textbooks filling our empty heads, Marion Brady reminds us in an excellent recent blog post confronting current education “reforms.” Instead, we came to learning with our own ideas, opinions, explanations, beliefs and values. And then “we discovered real-world patterns and relationships — new knowledge that caused us to constantly rethink, reorganize, reconstruct, and replace earlier knowledge.”

That’s a very serious intellectual practice, worthy of 10,000 hours. (Translate: eight years of school!) And it takes a coach — someone to watch closely, suggesting just the next stretch a learner needs, at just the right moment. It’s a delicate business, not simple transfer of information– and it has everything to do with the learner’s motivation. As Brady puts it,

As is true of adults, kids’ ideas and beliefs become part of who they are, so attempts to change them may come across as attacks on their identity and be resisted.

That’s why teaching is such a complex, multi-step process, he says in this wonderful summary of what the good teacher practices every day. (Reminder: 10,000 hours is at least five or six years of teaching!)

The teacher has to (a) “get inside” that head to figure out what’s thought to be true, right, or important, (b) understand the kid’s value system well enough to offer ideas sufficiently appealing to warrant taking them seriously and paying attention, (c) choose language or tasks that question old ideas and clarify new ones, (d) get feedback as necessary to decide how to proceed, (e) load the whole process up with enough emotion to carry it past short-term memory, and (f) do this for a roomful of kids, no two of whom are identical.

The faces of students in our Practice Project lit up when they told me of the learning experiences that really stuck with them. Above all, it was hands-on projects, internships, and apprenticeships that led them to ask better questions, explore their subjects more deeply, and rise to the challenge of producing new knowledge.

Along the way, their level of engagement with adults also shifted in crucial ways. Learner and teacher were in it together. And it showed.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Movies and Education (RGB STUDIOS)

State’s film tax credit lifts small businesses, excites imaginations

When he sponsored the bill that would, when adopt ed in April 2008, make Michi gan the most generous state in the nation for movie pro ducers, Andy Meisner had three objectives: creating jobs as quickly as possible in the depths of our economic melt down; growing longer-term a new industry that could some day account for perhaps 5% of the state economy, and re taining creative, educated young people who were looking to pursue their fu tures outside Michigan.

And by those objectives, Meisner said, the movie tax credit is not only a success but a bigger one than most of the much less visible tax breaks and incentives the state provides for other busi nesses — about $36 billion worth last year, including the $37.5 million for the movie, TV and video industry.

A bipartisan idea

Meisner, now the elected Oakland County treasurer, was a Democratic state repre sentative in his final term when he worked with state Sen. Jason Allen, a Republican from Petoskey, to as semble the movie tax pack age, which passed the Legisla ture with only one vote against, from Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi.

“We have literally billions of dollars in various tax ex penditures, exemptions and credits that have been grant ed, many of which do not deliver the desired outcome,” Meisner said. “While the state coffers may never be fully replenished from the film tax credits, this was never about making money for the state.”

But with the next governor facing a $1.6-billion budget hole and unemployment ex pected to remain well into double digits, can Michigan really afford to give away money to have movies shot here?

Cassis’ continuing skepti cism was fueled by last week’s report from the state Senate Fiscal Agency. The report asserted that the expenditure of $100 million through movie tax credits has generated less than $60 million in economic activity. But the term-limited Cassis is doubtful a lame-duck Legislature will do anything about the credits in the bal ance of this year. To next year’s incoming crowd, how ever, they may look like low hanging fruit to throw at that budget deficit.

I hope not. I prefer to see them as seeds that sprouted quickly but will never grow into sturdy timbers of the state economy without time and tending. Given the flighty nature of the movie business, just the chatter about chang ing the rules might spur pro ducers to seek a better deal elsewhere.

Infrastructure for films

Developers are working to build a foundation for the industry here, including the construction of studios and postproduction facilities.
Schools are getting up to speed on the education need ed for jobs in film, video and video game production. And movie makers are slowly get ting more comfortable using local talent. They are, by all accounts, enormously pleased with the locations and the work ethic here and, of course, the tax break.

There are countless stories of businesses that got a quick shot in the arm from having a movie company around — a coffee shop that was repaired and repainted for a scene, a secondhand store that had its best sales day ever when the wardrobe people came in to shop, a local bistro that got a boost from a movie star on karaoke night.

And there are the intangi bles — the movies have given our collective psyche a boost amid our economic woes, something to talk about, even participate in. They greatly expanded Michigan’s pres ence on the national and glob al stage, too. Nothing calls attention to your world-class airport quite the way George Clooney can.

Movies are never going to replace the auto industry as Michigan’s economic main stay. But if we stick with what we’ve started and allow it to grow, they can — along with batteries, solar shingles, wind turbines and biomedical breakthroughs — be a solid and exciting part of Michi gan’s future. We’ve spent a lot more to get back a lot less.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

THEY'RE READY!

Partnership for 21st Century Skills (Video Contest 2010 Winners)
https://thepartnershipfor21stcenturyskills238.eduvision.tv/Default.aspx?q=trkxL8LvXknf8kDDdmJdOg%253d%253d

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

EDUCATION NATION! (Tuesday)

A RECIPE for SUCCESS!

Practice: We’re in it together

Sunday, September 26, 2010

The NEXT CONVERSATION (PART of UN-VARNISHING the TRUTH)

THE LARGER CONVERSATION (NOW IT is EVERYWHERE!)

PART of the LARGER CONVERSATION! (Zuckerman-Facebook)

Waiting for Superman (Education and Movies)

Movies and Education (RGB STUDIOS)

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

THEY'RE READY!

Monday, September 13, 2010

FILM: Waiting for Superman

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Robert Bobb on 21st Century Digital Learning Environments

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