H Duderstadt, New Tech Maven

The 4th of July was always a very big celebration in my home town. It was the 1960′s and we were just beginning to hear the call for “Safe & Sane” fireworks. You could still buy pretty much anything short of tactical nuclear weapons if knew where to go.

One of the most distinct memories of have of those hot summer days when the air smelled of smoke and the sounds of pops, whizzing, and an occasional KABOOM range out across the town was my father’s annual war with our neighbor Bruce. There was a open lot separating our houses and every year my father and Bruce would attempt to fire rockets back and forth at each other in and effort to span this gap. At first, we used bottle rockets but would harmlessly land and explode in the middle somewhere. But, as dad and his nemesis would explore an ever larger array of “weapons dealers” the size of the rockets began to grow. And so their range.

Finally, fateful day arrived. I was down in my dirt pile (it had been a sand pile but I had mixed the sand with dirt because any 10 year old boy will tell you, sand is boring, DIRT IS COOL! I was busy placing a pair of black cats under an enemy car. “Come on, let’s show Bruce whose the boss!” my dad exclaimed as he walked by. I jumped up and followed along, noticing his was carrying a rather large cardboard box under his arm. We strolled down the incline in our lawn to a point near an old tree. Across the vast (at least to a 10 year old) expanse of the open lot I could see Bruce doing what he loved to do on hot summer days, sleep in his hammock in the front yard. Dad placed the box on the grown and with a flourish pulled out his pocket knife and deftly opened it. He reached in and carefully removed one of the largest rockets I’d ever seen. “This’ll get him, for sure!” dad gleefully said. We set up the launcher, and dad carefully gauged the wind and distance before targetting this monster. “OK, when I light this run up and get behind that tree. I’m not sure what it’s going to do!” He reached down, and with this tip of his Falcon cigar carefully lit the fuse. It immediately sparked to life and we dashed up and hide behind the tree. WHOOOOSH! the rocket suddenly roared off the pad. We followed it go up…up…up…then arc over and start falling…falling…then KABLAM!!!!! It couldn’t have done better if it had been GPS guided as it exploded about 10 feet above Bruce’s head. He suddenly flipped up and out of the hammock and landed on his lawn. He sat there dazed for a few moments then suddenly jumped up and looked our way. By this time Dad was out in the open. “Phhhhhttttttt” dad razed him. Bruce shook his fist and dashed into his house. So began yet another year of the great Duderstadt/Finalyson war. It was kind of like the Hatfields versus the McCoys accept we used rockets, and every other day of the year my dad and Bruce were good friends.

Sadly, the rockets got every larger until they no longer just hit our lots but our neighbors and complaints brought an end to this annual battle.

There’s been a lot of press lately on the school in Rhode Island that fired it’s entire teaching staff.  Even the president stepped in and agreed with the move.   But, I personally believe that though there may be a few teachers that could do a better job, the solution to the education crisis in the US involves everybody from politicians who will honestly back education and not just use it to help get them re-elected to office then cut, cut, cut when they need to balance the budget; or administrators who are educators and not polticians; or voters who will support a school bond even though they don’t have any children; or media producers who are willing to explore adding learning content to their product because it can make them more entertaining if done right.

But no one key component of the process of raising children is so important as the parent. They are key to the future of their children.  Yet, all too often they are struggling to keep up with their kids and their kids “tech”.

Take a look at a typical teenager today and you’ll find a walking advertisement for best buy.   Armed with iPods, iPhones, laptops, all jacked in to networks that give them access to twitter, facebook, texting, phone messaging, World of Warcraft, Second Life, Wikipedia and the vast array of content that is the internet they are easily the most connected generation in history.  At home, many have Xbox 360s, PS3s, Wiis, and any rang of sophisticated game platforms, often hooked up to high def TVs.  Even their conversations can be a blend of texting shortcuts, typical teen slang, and rap tunes.

So, it’s little wonder that those who grew up in the shadow of one media type, whether it be television or radio, or even first generation Mac’s sometimes have a difficult time really understanding these “Digital Natives’ as they come to be known.  And not the least mystified is often their parents.

Though a parent might be a definite blackberry addict (often called “crackberry”), have a facebook account, and actually be at level 70 on World of Warcraft, they must realize these kids are on a whole different level.  A key goal of this site is to attempt to help decode the world modern children live in and help parents better understand and so play an active role in their children’s growth and learning.  Especially now with the severe budget cuts that school districts all over the US are facing, the importance of parents being involved in supporting their children and their learning can not be underemphasized.

So hang on, as I set out to help you 20th century raise 21st century kids1

Have you ever wondered about the way you learn things.  When I was studying education for my MS, I was introduced to amazing test called the VARK test.  It’s a series of multiple choice questions like:

In this time of severe budget cuts, public schools are facing serious challenges in how to save money, not the least of which is determining which classes to cut.  As a public school teacher who taught Animation & Video Game Design for several years, I know first hand how the ever shrinking pool of money available is driving schools to drop those classes which are not considered necessities to their children being prepared for college or a career and may not have the enrollment numbers to justify them.   The classes eliminated can range from art, drama and music to career and technical education, to even the “gold standard” AP classes.

A huge problem with doing this is that many schools suffer from a severe lack in elective courses that students need to graduate.  By cutting back on the often limited number of courses that any student can take, schools risk an an increased dropout rate for those borderline students who often don’t qualify for AP classes or even more advanced pupils finding ever more difficult to get enough units to graduate.

One potential solution to this problem is to change the way we approach K-12 learning and how to offer a broad range of classes (both in terms of content and even methods of teaching) to a broad range of students at a variety of levels.  Traditionally, larger schools have benefited in their ability to offer a much larger number of classes on a broad range of subjects.  Where as a school like the one I currently teach for may be able to offer 4 years of Art, or Drama, or Music along with a dizzying array of AP classes and career and technical ed programs; small schools like the high school I attended (with a graduating class of 92) can only offer the core courses simply because there aren’t enough kids to fill the sections and so justify hiring a teacher and paying for the materials to teach the classes.  Of course, the budget crisis I mentioned earlier is now driving this problem up to larger schools as well.

The problem is that we still are limited by the idea that in order for a class to be available to a student, the school they attend must offer it.  Even if you take the approach that many ROP vocational programs take of having regional centers where kids can drive (or be bussed),  you are still limited by distance.  If the number of students, even in a region, who will sign up for a program is too few, the program cannot be justified.  The heart of the problem is that we still focus on PHYSICAL classes.   We need to open our minds to VIRTUAL ones.

Already, there are kids who take online courses in order to complete enough units to graduate or prepare for an AP test that will help them get into a college that looks at AP scores.  But, this number is still relatively small because school counselors and administrators often overlook online programs as a viable option.  Additionally, the students often are unaware and of them, and then, when they actually take  a class, fail because they are unfamiliar with just HOW to take an online class, get the most our of it, and get the best grade.

What if a public school suffering from severe budget cuts were to create several computer labs and staff them with student teachers in order to support online learning?   And, their counselors had a complete list of programs and had worked with the schools that operate them to schedule students regularly into them?

What I’m speaking of here is to take a modular approach to learning.  Instead of trying to offer everything in one school, a district, or county, or even state education department could  coordinate a broad range of online and blended (combining online learning with lab support) across dozens if not hundreds of schools.  Initially, you could utilize the multimedia of university, community college, and even private programs available.   But, a K-12 school that had a program that was particularly successful could could take that class online and offer it to schools across the region, state, or even nationally.  Students would benefit in that they would have an amazing array of classes available.

There are hurdles in schools actually developing their own online courses, not the least of which is state requirements that fund programs based on “seat time” or Average Daily Attendance (ADI).  In essence, unless there is a student in a seat for a particular number of hours, they will not help cover it’s cost.   The Florida Virtual School faced this problem.  State politicians succeeded in changing the requirements to RESULT BASED rather than TIME BASED.  So, as long as the students learned the required content, the cost was covered by the state.

Additionally, there are the technological and course development requirements for online learning.  But, one of the most powerful and popular online learning systems, Moodle, is FREE.  And, as professional instructional designers and those with online learning degrees struggle with the current economy, there are people out there who can help develop such programs.

Kids in school love to complain about how boring so many subjects they have to study are.  “Why do I have to learn Trigonometry anyway???  It’s so BOOOORING!”   Or, “our physics teacher was going on and on about gravity and I just don’t get it.”

Yet, ask them about the latest video game they are playing and their whole mood will change as they start going on and on about how many zombies they were able to kill in Left 4 Dead, or how they built this amazing house in Sims 3 and wished they could really live there.   The two might appear to have nothing in common but you’d be suprised.

Take a look at the typical video game boys in particular like to play and you’ll find a real world complete with many of the same  properties a real world has, INCLUDING GRAVITY.  In fact, there is a game known as Garry’s Mod which is called a “physics sandbox”.  It’s basically an environment where the laws of physic exist and you can create things that are influence by this.  A walking house; a tank you can drive around, an whole army that you can control, even electrical circuits that control specific machines.  Imagine a virtual place where children can build anything they can imagine and then operate it as if it’s in the real world.  The potential of this program in an educational environment is immense.

The possibilities go on and on.  If this is something that excites you, the best place to start is read James Paul Gee’s work “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition“