Thursday, November 21, 2013

The Day the Earth Stood Still



At 11:33 a.m. on Friday November 22 1963 I was working on my drawing for the Detroit News Drafting Competition design in my drafting class in Pontiac Central High School.  I had just finished sharpening my drafting pencil and was darkening some of the lines on my drawing.  I was sitting on the table on the back corner of the room with windows around me convinced that I would win the competition.  The announcement tone of the speakers in the classroom came on and the principal announced that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas. 
I remember stopping and wondering what that meant.  I looked around and all the other students had also stopped working and just looked at each other.  I forget the teacher’s name, Mr. Lowry I believe, just sat there and stared at the speakers on the upper corner of the room.  No one said anything.  About 30 minutes later the Principal came over the speaker again and announced that President Kennedy was dead.  I felt like the floor had opened up and I was falling into an endless hole.  I remember grabbing the corner of the drafting table just to make certain I was not falling.  Still, nobody said anything for the longest time.
I was in the 10th grade at that time and the 1960 Presidential campaign was the political “coming of age” for me.  Prior to that time, politics an elected officials was something that was given, that one studied in civics class, or history class, that one heard people discuss but since it never affected you, one did not put much attention to it.  But the 1960 Presidential campaign changed all that for me.  I discovered what being progressive meant and what being conservative meant.  I discovered that people with money voted for Republicans and people without money voted for Democrats.  I wasn’t sure exactly why, but generally Democrats wanted to share and Republicans did not.  Having arrived from Mexico recently I knew that our family could not vote, but that didn’t stop me from being involved with politics.  I remember my mother saying that wasn’t our business, but I wasn’t sure that that was true. 
I remember having mixed emotions during the debates because I happened to like Nixon and the fact that he came across as being pretty smart, but I also liked Kennedy because he always made sense.  I remember thinking that if the people in my Dad’s Union were for Kennedy how could all of them be wrong?  I had a Kennedy button that I was proud to wear – I wish I would have kept it.  I don’t know what became of that button.
I walked home from Pontiac Central High to our house on the south east side of the city.  Every day on the way home I would stop at the Pontiac Library half way to our house and stayed there to finish my homework.  I also used to treat myself after completing my homework with about half hour of reading my favorite magazines:  Aviation Week and Space Technology and Scientific America.  That Friday I went to the library, to my favorite desk on the east side of the building in the aisle way at the end of the book shelves.  I didn’t do homework that day.  I sat there and cried.


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

To MOOC or not to MOOC? That is the question


I have been very skeptical about the government (in Michigan at least) pushing for online courses as a substitute to fully-funding public education. The way this effort is being lobbied in the legislature, you can almost see the profit making corporations hovering like vultures before they settle down to eat the spoils. The profit-making aspect of online education is as bad of an idea as Charter Schools are; they take a public good and turn it into a profit making institution. Any economist worth its salt can tell you that a public institution is more efficient and effective than any profit based institution. But effectiveness and efficiency is not what is being sold by our State government and our electorate, more leaning toward ignorance and ambivalence, believe it. 


But I had an epiphany last night, while doing my evening routine of scanning through online newspapers, and while my 11 year old son working online through edmodo.org as part of doing his school work (all the while thinking, I’m sure, of how to best to beat some of his X-Box games) and while my wife, who will be laid off from her job, was going though online training in an effort to retrain herself for a new job. I came to the conclusion that a MOOC-like instructional support for students K-12 is what our public schools need. If we could only capture a fraction of the interest and addiction that kids display to video games like “Call to Duty,” for a MOOC-like instructional support, they could be doing college level work by middle school.

What is a MOOC, you ask? A MOOC ( Massive Open Online Course) is the first step toward the transformation of our upper-level educational system; the future way of higher learning not only for Colleges and Universities, but also for the Trades, Continuing Education, and Corporate training. It is the future of education being started today. Did you know that anybody can go and take just about any college class for free! And, I'm not talking about classes from “questionable”profit organizations like Phoenix University or Baker College.  I am talking courses from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, as well as public institutions like University of Michigan, San Jose State, Berkley, UCLA, etc. You can learn to your heart’s content and not pay a dime (well there may be some nominal fee of $10 – to - $50 bucks for a certificate or other things, but it is a long way from the semester tuition you would have to pay).

Of course, there is a catch, as Rumpelstiltskin indicates in the TV show ONCE Upon a Time: “All magic comes with a price.” In this case, the catch is that the MOOC system is so new and growing so fast that no one has figured out how to link a college degree with learning. You can get certificates of course completion and some employers accept that as training for some cases. Some Universities will accept the coursework for a degree and they charge a fee –much less than the normal tuition. But for what I envision, that is not a problem.

My vision is having a MOOC-like system not to replace our current K-12 education, but to supplement it. Although there may be some cases where school requirements could be met through MOOC, but the greatest value is the complementary and supplementary support that a MOOC-like system would give to the kids. Not only can it consist of standard tutorials, but I see it also evolving into game-like approach that would use game programs akin to the X-Box and PS4 games that addict kids into their game world. Imagine kids addicted to learning!

This is a great opportunity for an entrepreneur; development of game like educational materials. Also it is a great opportunity for PhD-level academic research: How and why are kids addicted to these games and how do we best adopt it to a K-12 learning environment. I think we still need a classroom because there is other valuable learning from teachers, but in our fast paced world the kids and the teachers need some help.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Eleven Score and Seventeen Years


I lived and worked in Washington DC for many years and one of my favorite places was the Lincoln Memorial.  When I got the opportunity, and certainly when I had visitors, I would take them to the Lincoln Memorial and read out loud the Gettysburg Address on the south wall on the inside of the building.  a very inspiring speech
In many ways it reflects the situation we find ourselves now with political partisan civil war in Congress that can best be classified as a “non”- shooting war.  Our partisan conflict is really a test to see if our nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” can endure. 
It was President Lincoln’s commitment to do right, to liberty, to his dedication that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.   This is not what I hear from the extreme right wing.  They want a government by a few select people, those with money or by corporations; they want to privatized liberty where only those that can pay have it, and they don’t agree with the proposition that all men are created equal.  Worst yet, they are behaving like “rebels without a cause” with no intent or willingness to govern.  We are now eleven score and seventeen years from when this nation was conceived and it is facing the greatest challenge to its continuation.  Will we be brave enough to defend it? 
Below is the full text of Mr. Lincoln's speech.

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
Nov. 19, 1863