July 30, 2010
(Editor’s Note: This story originally was published by Erik Robelen in Education Week on July 13 to highlight the efforts underway on many fronts to raise the status of STEM in public education. Read original story by clicking here or read the snippet below and check out the selected topics additionally covered.)
This is a good read…
Given the ways computer technology—from the iPhone and YouTube to uses in medical research and national security—is changing so many facets of life, you might imagine that schools have been stepping up students’ exposure to computer science to help drive the digital revolution.
But recent data suggest otherwise. One survey indicates a sizable drop in the availability of even introductory computer-science courses in public and private secondary schools since 2005. Participation rates for Advanced Placement courses in computer science have been relatively flat for years, while the rates have gone way up in traditional science and mathematics disciplines, such as calculus, chemistry, and biology.
“We’re an order of magnitude off from these other courses,” said Janice E. Cuny, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, who argues that high-quality computer-science instruction is all too rare in public schools.
Representation of female and minority students among those studying computer science in high school and college is seen as especially low.
National statistics indicate that computing will be one of the fastest-growing areas for employment in coming years, but experts say the U.S. educational pipeline is expected to fall far short in producing college graduates in the field.
Read more on additional topics covered in this piece such as Recent Initiatives, the ‘Big Confusion’, Promising Career Field, and Georgia Computes.
July 28, 2010
New Mexico once again has missed the cut in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top contest, which is doling out federal dollars to states that propose and adopt innovative approaches to K-12 education.
New Mexico was among 35 states and the District of Columbia who applied for the second round of Race to the Top after failing to win in Round 1 back in March. Including the 36 applications for the second round, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for either the first or second rounds – or both.
New Mexico had hoped to win $75 million.
The second-round finalists announced on Tuesday were: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
Tennessee and Delaware were the only states that won money in the contest’s first round.
Scoring and feedback on New Mexico’s application won’t be available until after the winners of the second round are announced in late August or early September.
Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion federal education program that is the largest pool of discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance, and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.
Innovate-Educate was a strong supporter of both applications.
The good news is that even though New Mexico didn’t win the money, the state is planning to continue pursuing the education reforms spelled out in its 200-page application, according to Gov. Bill Richardson’s new education secretary, Dr. Susanna Murphy.
Those reforms included “linking teacher and principal evaluations to student growth” and new “collaborations aimed at improving low-performing schools throughout the state.”
“While I am disappointed that we were not chosen as a finalist, we will not let up on our efforts to implement these education reforms,” said Murphy in a prepared statement. “Teacher unions and major stakeholders agreed when the application was submitted that we would continue with these reforms even if we did not receive the federal funds.”
Murphy also said the current administration has made education reform its number one priority, and as a result, New Mexico has seen consistent improvement over the past seven years. She added, “This process has only strengthened that commitment, and we will continue to build on those initiatives to benefit students and the state’s economy.”
The Race to the Top program, part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus law, will funds to states that are implementing ambitious reforms aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap. Many states also passed significant reform laws that allowed for the development of more charter schools and tightened teacher accountability and tenure requirements in order to increase their chances of winning a grant.
Nine of the states that submitted applications last time did not reapply in Round 2.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged that not all of the finalists would be awarded grants from the almost $3.4 billion remaining in Race to the Top. President Obama has requested 1.35 billion for the program in the administration’s fiscal 2011 budget.
July 26, 2010
The cyber threat against our country’s information network is considered one of our highest defense priorities. The Cyber Patriot Competition designed by the Air Force Association (AFA) to promote the study of computer science and other STEM subjects among high school students aims to help fill the void of qualified professionals in the defense industry now and in the years to come.
The competition pits teams against one another in the defense of a notional computer network against attack by professional hackers. Pilot tests with Cyber Patriot over the last two years have been highly successful in motivating high school students toward the study of STEM subjects related to the program and toward the pursuit of higher education in the STEM fields.
Recently t he program was recognized by the prestigious Naval Post Graduate School as “the most significant among cyber-security programs with the greatest reach in securing our homelandfor the future.”
This year the Air force Association will select 1,000 teams to compete for the Commander-in Chief’s Trophy that will be presented this spring in Washington, D.C. High Schools all around North Carolina are encouraged to field teams.
Interested parties can learn more about the competition by going to the AFA website or by contacting AFA State Vice President Louis Emond by email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
The AFA is committed to the enhancement of STEM education and presents grants to primary, middle, and high school teachers who have innovative STEM projects that they are implementing.
July 05, 2010
Take your time reading this. That’s the point.
Not all education can be performed online; sometimes it is important to turn off the computer and pick up a book, says author and IBMer John Miedema.
Today’s world moves at a much faster pace, but that doesn’t mean learning has to follow suit – especially when it involves complex ideas in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Miedema is an IT architect at IBM (NYSE: IBM) in Ottawa, Ontario, whose 2009 book “Slow Reading” explores the movement.
In a phone interview, he explains that it’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible, but there comes a time when you deeply want to comprehend a subject, especially complex subjects such as STEM, that you really need to go offline and read more slowly.
“Print books are still the better technology for long-form reading,” he notes, but also saying the Web has its place in the mix. “A student or an employee trying to understand a complex idea will benefit on the whole by picking up a print book that allows them to read without distraction.”
Miedema recently finished his graduate work in the Library and Information Sciences program at the University of Western Ontario and is well aware of the difficulties of consuming large amounts of information in a short period of time.
He spoke at the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) Forum at the Library Congress last year and said it is often useful and necessary to read quickly, but that reading slowly aids to comprehension when deciphering complex text and may even involve arguing with a text, so to speak, or seeking out additional materials to add context.
“In an age of information overload, an increasing number of people are choosing to slow down and enjoy reading again,” he said during his presentation in October 2009.
At a time when people spend much of their time skimming Web sites, text messages and e-mails, a recent article by The Associated Press points out students who say they’ve become so accustomed from flitting from page to page online that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books. One student said when he was reading a regular book and would come to a word that would almost act like a hyperlink and trigger his mind to some other thing.
“E-books are metadata for print books,” Miedema reiterates. “Books are not being replaced by digital technology. Instead of reading online, Web sites are increasingly offering online services to enhance the experience of reading print books.”
Little formal research has been done on slow reading, other than studies on physical conditions such as dyslexia and eye disorders. But, the movement is gaining ground, and certainly has a valid connection to STEM education, which requires slowness, experimentation, memorization, and precision.
“Slow reading definitely can be a benefit in STEM,” Miedema adds.
More and more segments of our society – farmers, factory workers, doctors, professors – have been urged to speed things up in order to produce more and faster. This idea of slowing down certainly has impacts in education as well as daily workforce demands – especially in technical fields where complex ideas can’t simply be reduced to snippets.
