2008年8月24日 星期日

让说唱走进德国课堂

我在90年代初到德國大學城
發現他們的雲遊詩人的傳統似乎還在

文化社会 | 2008.08.24

让说唱走进德国课堂

每个人一定都对中学里的学习生活记忆犹新:读本里长达数页的课文,还有那些必须背下来的练习题。在这样的负担下,有谁会喜欢学习呢?两个柏林人罗宾.海富 斯和文岑特.施泰因想出了一个解决办法:他们创立了一个名为"说唱学"的项目,把说唱音乐和学习知识结合在一起,专门迎合青少年的口味。记者参观了他们位 于柏林的工作室,给德国之声发来如下报道。

歌里唱的,全都是关于欧洲的地理文化知识。刻板的知识加上流行的说唱音乐,听起来好像很奇怪,但是这两个来自柏林的音乐制作人却把两者巧妙地糅合在了一起。27岁的罗宾-海富斯在大学多媒体艺术专业的毕业作品,就是四首包含了文化知识的歌曲。

文森特.施泰因负责制作了这四首歌,他告诉我们,为什么说唱音乐特别适合糅进文化知识,"我们可以在尽可能短的音乐里加入尽可能多的内容,而这些信息不能是粗话、脏话,而必须要适合青少年儿童,让他们在听歌的同时学到知识,我觉得利用说唱音乐作为渠道是非常棒的主意。"

文森特和罗宾在制作说唱音乐方面可谓驾轻就熟:文森特虽然只有24岁,但是他已经在为嘻哈乐队"狂野柏林"和德国著名说唱双人组合"我和我"制作音 乐;而身为说唱歌手的罗宾,也即将推出自己题为《疯狂马克》的第二张个人专辑。两个人都穿着宽松的牛仔裤,休闲的T恤衫和球鞋。文森特并不认为他们的音乐 会因为加入了教育性的知识而变得不够酷,他说:"我们给青少年制作音乐,而且是很酷的音乐。我们也没有唱什么小黄鸭子在水里游之类的幼稚歌词,而是一些非 常酷的内容。所有人听到我这个理念都觉得很有创意,甚至还有一些说唱歌手对我说:可惜啊,我怎么没想到这个主意呢?"

这首歌里唱的有柏林的历史,地球的诞生,还有关于欧洲和生物的内容。罗宾-海富斯希望通过调查,研究一下以说唱形式讲授知识对于青少年是否奏效。 700名柏林的中学生接受了调查,结果是:他们通过听说唱歌曲和通过书本学习知识的效率差不多。但是,令罗宾大吃一惊的是孩子们的另一种反应,"孩子们在 调查中的第一反应是,说唱音乐终于不再骂人了。本来我们还担心,假如我们不再像孩子们崇拜的说唱歌手那样往歌词里面加粗话了,会不会让他们失去兴趣。事实 上我们的担心是多余的,他们反而更喜欢我们的风格。这时候我才想到:说唱歌手从来都没有想到去问问孩子们,他们到底愿不愿意在歌里面听到脏话。"

文森特和罗宾的作品里原汁原味的嘻哈乐曲却赢得了孩子们的热爱,他们都要马上开始用这种方式来学习。听听孩子们怎么说。一个男孩:“因为旋律很好听。”一个女孩:“因为我们在听的时候理解起来很容易;但是在看书的时候,假如有生词的话,就看不大懂了。 ”

但为什么跟着音乐学习效果那么好呢?罗宾解释,歌词里面的押韵、节奏能够以一种特定的方式跟歌词的内容有机结合在一起。他说:"因为,重要的是孩子 或者是成人在听歌的时候知道:我要学习这首歌里讲述的知识,我可以先听一段,记住里面的内容,然后再慢慢往后面听,这样就能把这些内容都记在脑子里。在这 个记忆的过程中,歌曲的押韵、歌词内容,由此在人脑海里浮现的图景,再加上音乐旋律的支撑,加上音乐的节奏和韵律,都可以在脑子里打下记号,起到加强记忆 的作用。"

罗宾的大学毕业作品当然得到了最高分;而且这几首歌现在已经影印出版。此外,罗宾和文森特还正在和一家德国教科书出版社商谈出版作品的事宜,"我的梦想就是,有一天,老师在下课布置作业时不是说:回去复习课本,而是说:回去听听CD。"

德国之声版权所有

转载或引用请标明出处

Lydia Leipert

2008年8月22日 星期五

可笑的奴才> 臺大

這所名列所謂"164名",海峽兩岸第一!的世界大學

只會申請什麼ISO --研究開發
只會臣服上海交大的軟體

給它拍手 台灣之光


****

上海交大公布2008年世界大學排名,臺

【追求卓越 邁向頂尖】
上海交大公布2008年世界大學排名
臺大名列164名,海峽兩岸第一

 上海交大8月公布2008年世界大學排名(Academic Ranking of World Universities,簡稱ARWU),臺灣大學名列164名,較去年172名進步8名,為海峽兩岸第一。

 上海交大世界大學排名指標,係針對各校的學術表現,以獲諾貝爾獎、菲爾茲獎數量、高被引研究者數(HiCi)、發表在Nature 和Science的論文數、SCI、SSCI論文數為指標。

  臺大在教育部「邁向頂尖大學計畫」經費挹注下,2008年Nature 和Science的論文數指標得分,與SCI、SSCI論文數指標得分,均較去年進步,總分也較去年成長。另近十年學術論文總數世界排名由去年第80名進 步至今年72名,近十年學術論文被引次數世界排名由去年224名進步至215名,已達研究論文質量倍增的初步目標。

 ※2008年上海交大全球大學評比結果

2008年8月21日 星期四

Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod.

十年間從"網通"校園到這"移動校園"

Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod.


Published: August 20, 2008

Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students.

Skip to next paragraph
Jud Davis/Freed-Hardeman University

Freed-Hardeman University in Tennessee is providing incoming students with a free Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

Jud Davis/Freed-Hardeman University

Students at Freed-Hardeman activate their iPhones. Experts say uses for mobile technology in education are in their infancy.

Readers' Comments

"Are we training thinkers in our colleges or are we training gadget users?"
Paul, Kalamazoo, MI

The always-on Internet devices raise some novel possibilities, like tracking where students congregate. With far less controversy, colleges could send messages about canceled classes, delayed buses, campus crises or just the cafeteria menu.

While schools emphasize its usefulness — online research in class and instant polling of students, for example — a big part of the attraction is, undoubtedly, that the iPhone is cool and a hit with students. Basking in the aura of a cutting-edge product could just help a university foster a cutting-edge reputation.

Apple stands to win as well, hooking more young consumers with decades of technology purchases ahead of them. The lone losers, some fear, could be professors.

Students already have laptops and cellphones, of course, but the newest devices can take class distractions to a new level. They practically beg a user to ignore the long-suffering professor struggling to pass on accumulated wisdom from the front of the room — a prospect that teachers find galling and students view as, well, inevitable.

“When it gets a little boring, I might pull it out,” acknowledged Naomi J. Pugh, a first-year student at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., referring to her new iPod Touch, which can connect to the Internet over a campus wireless network. She speculated that professors might try harder to make classes interesting if they were competing with the devices.

Experts see a movement toward the use of mobile technology in education, though they say it is in its infancy as professors try to concoct useful applications. Providing powerful hand-held devices is sure to fuel debates over the role of technology in higher education.

“We think this is the way the future is going to work,” said Kyle Dickson, co-director of research and the mobile learning initiative at Abilene Christian University in Texas, which has bought more than 600 iPhones and 300 iPods for students entering this fall.

Although plenty of students take their laptops to class, they don’t take them everywhere and would prefer something lighter. Abilene Christian settled on the devices after surveying students and finding that they did not like hauling around laptops, but that most always carried a cellular phone, Dr. Dickson said.

It is not clear how many colleges plan to give out iPhones and iPods this fall; officials at Apple were coy about the subject and said they would not leak any institution’s plans.

“We can’t announce other people’s news,” said Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod and iPhone marketing at Apple. He also said that he could not discuss discounts to universities for bulk purchases.

At least four institutions — the University of Maryland, Oklahoma Christian University, Abilene Christian and Freed-Hardeman — have announced that they will give the devices to some or all of their students this fall.

Other universities are exploring their options. Stanford University has hired a student-run company to design applications like a campus map and directory for the iPhone. It is considering whether to issue iPhones but not sure it’s necessary, noting that more than 700 iPhones were registered on the university’s network last year.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, iPhones might already have been everywhere, if AT&T, the wireless carrier offering the iPhone in the United States, had a more reliable network, said Andrew J. Yu, mobile devices platform project manager at M.I.T.

“We would have probably gone ahead of this, maybe just getting a thousand iPhones and giving them out,” Mr. Yu said.

The University of Maryland, College Park is proceeding cautiously, giving the iPhone or iPod Touch to 150 students, said Jeffrey C. Huskamp, vice president and chief information officer at the university. “We don’t think we have all the answers,” Mr. Huskamp said. By observing how students use the gadgets, he said, “We’re trying to get answers from students.”

At each college, the students who choose to get an iPhone must pay for mobile phone service. Those service contracts include unlimited data use. Both the iPhones and the iPod Touch devices can connect to the Internet through campus wireless networks. With the iPhone, those networks may provide faster connections and longer battery life than AT&T’s data network. Many cellphones allow users to surf the Web, but only some newer ones have Wi-Fi capability.

University officials say they have no plans to track their students (and Apple said it would not be possible unless students give their permission). They say they are drawn to the prospect of learning applications outside the classroom, though such lesson plans have yet to surface.

“My colleagues and I are studying something called augmented reality,” said Christopher J. Dede, professor in learning technologies at Harvard University. “Alien Contact,” for example, is an exercise developed for middle-school students who use hand-held devices that can determine their location. As they walk around a playground or other area, text, video or audio pops up at various points to help them try to figure out why aliens were in the schoolyard.

“You can imagine similar kinds of interactive activities along historical lines,” like following the Freedom Trail in Boston, Professor Dede said. “It’s important that we do research so that we know how well something like this works.”

The rush to distribute the devices worries some professors, who say that students are less likely to participate in class if they are multitasking. “I’m not someone who’s anti-technology, but I’m always worried that technology becomes an end in and of itself, and it replaces teaching or it replaces analysis,” said Ellen G. Millender, associate professor of classics at Reed College in Portland, Ore. (She added that she hoped to buy an iPhone for herself once prices fall.)

Robert S. Summers, who has taught at Cornell Law School for about 40 years, announced this week — in a detailed, footnoted memorandum — that he would ban laptop computers from his class on contract law.

“I would ban that too if I knew the students were using it in class,” Professor Summers said of the iPhone, after the device and its capabilities were explained to him. “What we want to encourage in these students is active intellectual experience, in which they develop the wide range of complex reasoning abilities required of the good lawyers.”

The experience at Duke University may ease some concerns. A few years ago, Duke began giving iPods to students with the idea that they might use them to record lectures (these older models could not access the Internet).

“We had assumed that the biggest focus of these devices would be consuming the content,” said Tracy Futhey, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at Duke.

But that is not all that the students did. They began using the iPods to create their own “content,” making audio recordings of themselves and presenting them. The students turned what could have been a passive interaction into an active one, Ms. Futhey said.


美大學送iPhone給新鮮人

美國多所大學慷慨分送學生蘋果iPhone手機,以及可隨時隨地上網的iPod,宣稱這些裝置能增進校方和學生的互動,更是有用上課輔助工具。

包括馬里蘭大學、奧克拉荷馬基督教大學、艾柏林基督教大學,和菲力哈曼大學在內,至少已有四所學校宣布今秋將發送iPod或iPhone給部份或所有學生,其他學校則在考慮各種選項。

史丹佛大學已聘請一家由學生經營的公司開發iPhone應用軟體,如校園地圖和指南,該校正考慮是否需要發送iPhone,因為去年有逾700支 iPhone在學校的網路登記。麻省理工學院(MIT)行動裝置平台專案經理安德魯.余說,若iPhone的電信供應商AT&T公司能提供更穩定 的網路服務,iPhone早就隨處可見。

這些隨時上網的裝置將帶來許多可能性,例如,可使校方追蹤學生聚會的地點,或提供其他較不具爭議的功能,例如傳送一些訊息給學生,舉凡老師臨時取消上課、校車誤點、校園緊急事件,甚至是學生餐廳的菜單。

校方強調這些裝置的效益,包括在上課堂利用網路搜尋資料以及學生的即時民調等。最重要的是,若校園裡到處可見iPhone這種先進工具,校方也能博得走在科技尖端的美譽。

艾柏林基督教大學為今秋入學的新鮮人準備了600支iPhone和300具iPod,該校的研究及行動學習計畫主管狄克森認為,使用這些手持裝置輔助教學 將是未來趨勢。狄克森說,雖然很多學生攜帶筆電上課,但不會帶著到處跑,他們偏愛較輕巧的裝置。這所大學經訪調後發現,學生們不喜歡隨身帶著筆電,但身上 總是帶著手機,因而決定選購iPhone。

蘋果公司是最大贏家,積極和有數十年科技產品購買力的年輕消費者建立關係。但有些教授卻感到憂心忡忡,擔心已有手機和筆電的學生,若再加上iPhone或 iPod,恐將更無法專心上課。在康乃爾大學法學院任教40年的桑莫斯教授本周宣布,他的課堂上不能使用筆電,也禁用iPhone。

專家發現,行動科技應用於教育是潮流所趨,雖然現在才剛起步,但由校方提供功能強大的手持裝置,勢必會引發科技在高等教育扮演角色的爭論。

2008年8月18日 星期一

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education




How can schools around the world educate their students better? What does the future hold? Most researchers who study these questions in the field of education peer through the lenses of sociology and public policy. HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen and colleagues chose a different approach—the theory of disruptive innovation, often applied to a variety of other industries, such as technology and health care. Christensen's theory was first explored in his two New York Times bestsellers, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997) and The Innovator's Solution (with Michael E. Raynor, 2003).

His latest book, coauthored with Michael B. Horn (HBS MBA '06) and Curtis W. Johnson, shows how the theory of disruptive innovation-which in a nutshell explains why organizations experience difficulty with particular types of innovation and how they might systematically succeed-offers promising insights for improving public education. The book is titled Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

According to the authors, "Our goal in writing this book was to dig beneath the sorts of surface explanations for why schools struggle to improve, and the lenses on innovation, which is our field of specialty, proved a great way to help us do just that."

Christensen, Horn, and Johnson recently teamed up via e-mail to answer a few questions from HBS Working Knowledge on the best paths to better education for more schoolchildren.

Martha Lagace: You have decided to study education through the lenses of your research on innovation. How did you come to approach the problem in this way, and what makes the analysis of public education similar to, and different from, other industries you have studied in-depth, such as computers and health care?

Authors: Nearly a decade ago, representatives who had played pioneering roles in the chartered school movement came to us and said, "If you'd just stand next to the world of public education and examine it through the lenses of your research on innovation, we bet you could understand more deeply how to improve our schools."

The ability of these lenses to shed new light on complicated problems has been proven in contexts ranging from national defense to semiconductors; from health care to retailing; and from automobiles to financial services to telecommunications. When we took the people from Education|Evolving up on their invitation, we saw quickly that the same was true in education. Our goal in writing this book was to dig beneath the sorts of surface explanations for why schools struggle to improve, and the lenses on innovation, which is our field of specialty, proved a great way to help us do just that.

Education has many unique facets to it. As people have been quick to point out, in the United States, education is highly regulated; it is first and foremost about the future of children—and thus the future of our country as well—so the stakes are high; and it has certain elements that have made the market difficult to penetrate and lasting reform hard to come by.

That said, our lenses show how any organization can innovate successfully, and the forces at work in schools and districts are the same as those in other organizations. In fact, one very surprising thing is that, on average, schools have done a better job adjusting to disruptions imposed upon them than have companies in the private sector. Our research shows that the classic signs of disruption are now occurring in the world of education, in the same ways they occur in the other contexts we have studied.

Q: As you write, "Disruption is a positive force. It is the process by which an innovation transforms a market whose services or products are complicated and expensive into one where simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability characterize the industry." How in essence do you think about disruption vis-à-vis public education? Where do you see the most room for innovation?

A: The lesson from all industries is that the most promising areas for innovation are pockets of what we call "nonconsumption"—areas that appear unattractive or inconsequential to the industry incumbents and where there are people who would like to do something but cannot access the available offering. By targeting these areas, you have a much greater chance of launching successfully a disruptive innovation that can transform a market.

The puzzle in U.S. education was that, at first blush, there are no obvious areas of nonconsumption; virtually everyone is required to attend school. If you take a deeper look, however, you see that actually there are many pockets of nonconsumption in education in the United States. For example, in many schools, if a student fails a course, he or she has no recourse to make up the class and must simply move on to the next course. There is no option for credit recovery. Likewise, no school can possibly offer all 34 Advanced Placement courses that are out there, and yet there are often students in the schools who would love to take some of the ones that are not offered.

In these foothold areas, computer-based or online learning is beginning to fill the void and plant itself and make inroads in the education system in classic disruptive fashion. Online learning has increased from 45,000 enrollments in 2000 to roughly 1 million in 2007, and shows signs of continuing to grow at an even more rapid pace.

Computer-based learning is an exciting disruption because it allows anyone to access a consistent quality learning experience; it is convenient since someone can take it virtually anywhere at any time; it allows a student to move through the material at any pace; it can customize for a student's preferred learning style; and it is more affordable than the current school system.

Q: What is the promise you see in this regard in the emerging online user networks?

A: Disruption tends to be a two-stage process. In the first stage, although the products are more accessible to users, they are typically still relatively complicated to build. We see this in education; effective and engaging computer-based learning products are not easy to make.

Within a few more years, however, two factors that were absent in stage 1 that are critical to the emergence of stage 2 will have fallen into place. The first will be robust platforms that facilitate the creation of user-generated content. The second will be the emergence of a user network, whose analogues in other industries include eBay and YouTube. A user network is a type of business model in which customers exchange with each other. For example, telecommunications is a user network because we send information to you, and you send it to us.

In education, this will mean that the tools of the software platform will make it so simple to develop online learning products that students will be able to build products that help them teach other students. Parents will be able to assemble tools to tutor their children. And teachers will be able to create tools to help the different types of learners in their classrooms. These instructional tools will look more like tutorial products than courseware initially. And rather than being "pushed" into classrooms through a centralized selection process, they will be pulled into use through self-diagnosis—by teachers, parents, and students who don't have access to another tutoring option.

Q: How would you suggest businesspeople lend their background and expertise to improving education?

A: It's a good question. Given the impact businesspeople have in society, it is crucial that they understand the root causes of why schools have struggled so much and why so many reform efforts have failed historically. Having this understanding will better guide them as they think through which school-improvement programs and initiatives to support.

We are already seeing a relatively big outpouring of activity from businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs behind computer-based learning solutions of various stripes—from mobile-platform solutions to educational gaming to online learning courses for computers in classrooms. This interest and activity should allow us to make great progress in the years ahead.

We also recommend investing in technological platforms that will allow for the robust educational user networks to emerge. Doing so will have extraordinary impact, and funding the development of these platforms and user networks within which learning tools can be exchanged should be financially rewarding for investors.

Q: How would you like to extend this research? What are you working on next?

A: The book is just the beginning. We have founded a nonprofit think tank, Innosight Institute, to promote the ideas from our work to the stakeholders in the system so that we can help create meaningful change. We also are employing the think tank to continue our research and improve our recommendations and understanding of the problems and potential solutions. For example, we are looking at more examples of on-the-ground disruptions in schools to better understand this change and to better understand the key elements of reforms that must be facilitated to bring about improved learning opportunities for everyone. This will help us better inform stakeholders at all levels and in all domains about what they can do to make a positive impact.

We're excited to work with partners and interested parties to make strides in the years ahead in one of the biggest problems facing our country.

About the authors

Martha Lagace is the senior editor of HBS Working Knowledge.

Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author or coauthor of five books, including The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution.

Michael B. Horn (HBS MBA '06) is cofounder and executive director, education, of Innosight Institute.

Curtis W. Johnson is a writer and consultant who has served as a college president, head of a public-policy research organization, and chief of staff to Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson. Johnson and his colleagues were among the early proponents of what has become the chartered school movement.

Keywords:

Innovation, Schools & Education, Education, North America

大學經營者之難題 For Leaders, Colleges Turn to Business

大學經營者之難題 For Leaders, Colleges Turn to Business

For Leaders, Colleges Turn to Business

Historically, academia and business have mixed like oil and water.

2008年8月17日 星期日

Engineering Success

SPECIAL REPORT: THE EDUCATION RACE

Engineering Success

An entrepreneur turned academic argues that to compete globally, American institutions should act more like Indian ones.

By Barrett Sheridan | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Vivek Wadhwa has a controversial message for Americans worried about outsourcing and losing their jobs. His advice: learn from India. An entrepreneur and successful businessman who's started two software companies, Wadhwa has spent the last three years as executive in residence at Duke University's engineering school, where he studies globalization and how America can compete in the face of low-cost labor in India, China and elsewhere. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Barrett Sheridan about why he thinks India, which produces high-quality researchers despite low-quality schools, could be a model for the U.S. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Your research looked at a much-cited statistic that says China and India combined graduate 10 times as many engineers as the U.S. each year. So let me ask: Should we be scared? Do those numbers mean America is losing its competitive edge?
The U.S. has many things to worry about, but the graduation rate of engineers is not one of them. Why? China's numbers are very large, but the quality is so poor that the vast majority are unemployable. They also classify a weird set of degrees as engineering; an auto mechanic could be called an engineer.

So what are the true numbers?
The [reported] numbers in China are about 500,000 versus about 150,000 in the U.S.A. India is under 250,000. But the trouble is these numbers are deceptive. I would discount the Chinese numbers by a factor of two or three to get to get rid of all the garbage. That would reduce China to about 200,000 real engineers. And only half of [graduating] Indian engineers are employable. Only now are you comparing apples to apples.


Despite the quality problem, the Indian economy is doing quite well, even branching out into sophisticated technological research and development. How are they doing that?
Just like private industry learned to adapt to India's weak infrastructure, they've learned to adapt to India's weak education system. Companies have developed the ability to train people from scratch, with leading companies able to train tens of thousands of people at a time and bring them up to world standards.

What kind of skills do they leave with?
Research and development in a whole variety of high-tech industries. Pharmaceuticals, aerospace, semiconductors, software, networking.

So someone with a weak formal education could become a lab researcher discovering new drugs?
Yes, exactly. You don't have to be a hotshot Ph.D. [The companies will] train them. Infosys has a new training institute that can train 13,500 people at a time. Engineering graduates get four months of mandatory boot-camp-like training, which means six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day. And if you're a science graduate or an arts graduate, you get seven months of training.


Is that also true for India's newly minted engineers?
The quality is so variable between the universities in India that [companies] can't rely upon it, so they basically have to bring everybody up to the same level.

Do you see anything parallel in the United States?
No. In the U.S., if you go back to the 1950s and the 1960s, when you joined IBM, you'd get seven months of training, and then they'd put you through a year's worth of job rotation. If a new recruit joins IBM today, they probably get three days of orientation and then they're on the job, expected to hit the ground running.

Does the U.S. have such a poor education system that we need to retrain workers, just like in India?
We don't need it because of the educational system, we need it for the existing workforce. There is no problem with the output of our universities; it's excellent. There's no problem with them joining new companies, ready to work. What's happened here is that globalization has disrupted the existing workforce. Globalization is now shifting critical R&D jobs overseas. It's hitting entire professions—for example, the software profession. Right now entry-level software workers are at a disadvantage in the U.S. because the same job can be done more cheaply in India.

But why retrain U.S. workers at all if it's less expensive to do it in India?
The point I'm making is that we need to come up with a comprehensive strategy to [deal with] globalization. The mantra right now is that we need to fix K-12 and we need to teach more math and science and everything will be OK. I'm saying by all means improve education … but the way you're going to compete globally is with the existing workforce—the people already out there, working for companies. Invest in training them. Learn from the way the Indians are doing it. The U.S. needs to adapt the same tactic here. Rather than closing the door on immigrants or constructing trade barriers—which will make us more like Cuba—we need to open up. But we need to adapt and invest in our existing workforce.

Is this something that will be cost-effective for companies to do? Will the government need to take the ball here?
This has to be a nationwide initiative. We need to come up with a policy that encourages companies to invest in their people. It can be tax breaks, it can be mandates. Just like with maternity leave … why not get training leave? We should basically make companies allow employees to take paid time off to improve their skills. And then we should have our community-college system and our universities provide the training.

Telling Americans they need to learn from India might not sit right—the U.S. doesn't have a good reputation for admiring the policies of others. As globalization continues, is that mentality going to have to change?
It will have to change. We have to hammer into the country the idea that the world has changed. The U.S. lead can't be taken for granted anymore. We could go the way of the British Empire. We have to take a hard look at ourselves and be proactive.

© 2008





Build It And They Will Learn

SPECIAL REPORT: THE EDUCATION RACE

Build It And They Will Learn

The geography of higher ed is changing fast, with Asia and the Mideast coming on strong.


Drive down Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare, and you'll pass the world's only seven-star hotel, its tallest building and its largest man-made resort island. But head off into the desert and you'll hit a modest-looking set of office buildings and construction cranes that promise to be just as superlative. This is the site of Dubai International Academic City: the future home of a Michigan State University campus and the center of the local effort to make the emirate into a new global hot spot for higher education. "There is a war out there for talent," says Abdulla al-Karam, director-general of Dubai's Knowledge and Human Development Authority, "and we're not going to let everyone else take the best."

Dubai, along with its neighbors, is leading a rush of countries trying to erode the dominance of Harvard, Yale and a handful of other, mainly American or British, schools. As of 2005 (the last year for which numbers are available) there were about 138 million students worldwide seeking university degrees, according to UNESCO—up 40 percent in seven years, reports the London-based Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. Traditional academic destinations—English-speaking countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia—are finding it harder and harder to meet that demand. Post-9/11 U.S. visa complications have also helped create a massive pool of international students looking for new places to learn. According to the Washington-based Association of International Educators, the market of postsecondary students studying outside their home countries grew 49 percent between 1999 and 2004, even as foreign enrollments in U.S. schools increased only 10 percent. That's created an enormous opportunity that will only grow, as the number of students seeking education abroad triples by 2025 to 7.2 million, as the Australian testing company IDP Education projects.

Many countries are eager to pick up the slack, and these efforts stand to permanently redraw the global education map. Traditional Western powerhouses seem likely to remain strong, but new centers in the Persian Gulf, China, Singapore and elsewhere are coming on fast. And those that can't adapt are quickly falling behind as schools elsewhere embark on bold new projects to increase their competitiveness, hire U.S.-trained administrators (they're the best at fund-raising), launch massive capital campaigns and put more and more courses online.


Although New Haven and London won't soon be replaced by Shanghai or Seoul, they have started to feel the heat. "We [in America] are already looking over shoulders," says Philip Altbach, director of the Boston-based Center for International Higher Education. "Academic leaders are already saying that if we don't keep up, we'll be overtaken … The U.S. still has a significant lead, but imagine if we had this discussion 40 years ago about the U.S. auto industry."

Consider China, which is leading its neighbors in the race to become an international education center. In the last six years, China has more than tripled the number of foreign students it hosts by investing heavily in its universities—including pouring more than $4 billion into its top research schools. The country has also opened its doors to international partnerships, with over 700 foreign academic programs operating in China as of 2006, according to the World Bank. Hong Kong is making a particularly strong push, increasing its cap on foreign students, offering generous scholarships and loosening employment restrictions.

Other Asian states are following China's lead, though with more mixed results. Singapore has managed to more than triple its foreign enrollments in the past five years (making international students 13 percent of its student bodies) by partnering with top Western institutions like the University of Chicago and INSEAD, the French business school, and the government hopes to attract an additional 150,000 foreign students to the country by 2015. But the high-profile closing of a number of foreign programs there due to financial concerns and complaints about academic freedom has lately raised questions about Singapore's long-term potential.


South Korea, for its part, has upped its higher-education spending to 2.6 percent of its GDP—a level second only to the United States', and more than twice the Western average. Seoul is pumping more than $2 billion over the next five years into research programs at existing universities and is building a 20,000-hectare business and education zone that has already attracted schools like the State University of New York at Stony Brook and North Carolina State University. Still, despite its massive outlay, just 22,000 foreign students enrolled in South Korea in 2006 (compared to more than 66,000 in Singapore), and 218,000 Koreans opted to study abroad. The country has also struggled to attract Western professors.

Most analysts agree that the region with the best shot at truly threatening the West is the oil-rich Persian Gulf. "The gulf is definitely the buzzword of the moment," says Veronica Lasanowski, the author of a recent report on student mobility for the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. The tens of billions of dollars in government money being spent on education projects there dwarfs the investment in any of the other educational centers. Enormously wealthy and relatively stable, Dubai and its neighbors have already dethroned cities like Cairo, Baghdad and Beirut, creating one of the more bitter internecine rivalries within the larger global education race (following story).

Together, the emirates have devoted more than $20 billion to cultural and educational projects. Symposiums, independent media, art shows, book fairs, film festivals and other hallmarks of intellectual life are now regular features in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, transforming the gulf coast into what Daniel Balland, director-general of the Sorbonne's Abu Dhabi campus, describes as "a modern-day Andalusia"—a reference to the great intellectual center in southern Spain that flourished 1,000 years ago through the interaction of Western and Islamic culture.

A bottomless reserve of oil wealth is helping woo prestigious universities to the region. Qatar began the trend by persuading top-tier American schools such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Northwestern to open branches in the sprawling Education City complex. Not to be outdone, Abu Dhabi has already opened a complete new campus for the Sorbonne and plans to open one for NYU in the fall; ambitious joint projects with INSEAD, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins are also in the works. Dubai, meanwhile, has partnered with Harvard, the London Business School and Boston University, as well as building the new Michigan State campus. "Others may have the vision, but they don't have the resources" for such projects, says Zaki Nusseibeh, vice chair of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and a member of the Sorbonne-Abu Dhabi's board of trustees. "We can do it."

Indeed, the existing partnerships represent just the tip of the iceberg. Since last year, Qatar, with a population of less than a million, has begun spending $1.5 billion a year on scientific education and research. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, recently started a $10 billion foundation—in one of the largest charitable donations in history —to "develop world-class knowledge" in the region. His emirate, along with Abu Dhabi and Qatar, is building multibillion-dollar science and technology parks to jump-start research efforts. Abu Dhabi is also pouring millions of dollars into an ambitious book-publishing project, hoping to almost triple the number of books published in Arabic every year—from about 300 to about 800—and translating up to 500 books annually, starting with authors like Milton Friedman, Stephen Hawking and, perhaps most surprisingly, Isaac Bashevis Singer.

While the sheer magnitude of academic spending makes the gulf impossible to ignore, this investment is just one factor shifting the intellectual landscape of the Middle East. Violence and instability have largely spared this corner of the region. And the benevolent and forward-looking leaders of countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates stand in sharp contrast to the autocrats who rule Egypt and Syria. Though the gulf states each have their own peculiarities, the emirates generally permit broad freedoms of speech and expression—especially when compared with neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which still practice draconian censorship. The emirates' governments also afford great social liberties to foreigners, with hardly any legal restrictions on dress, alcohol or gender roles.

Other initiatives are also helping. The heavy investments many of these states have made in airlines and hotels have made them unusually accessible. Visa restrictions (for everyone but Israelis) are among the most liberal in the world, and places like Dubai even offer "smart cards" to regular visitors, allowing them to pass effortlessly through "eGates" without showing a passport. This ease of travel has made conferences like last year's Festival of Thinkers in Abu Dhabi—which brought together 16 Nobel Prize winners and more than 160 intellectuals from around the world—an almost daily affair in the gulf. Last year 140 conferences took place in Qatar alone.

The ethnic and national diversity now found in the gulf has also helped attract American universities. "You can find people from South Asia, the Far East, Africa, Europe and the whole Middle East [there]," says Hilary Ballon, a former Columbia art history professor recently appointed an associate vice chancellor of New York University's Abu Dhabi campus. "That kind of cosmopolitan intersection is what drew NYU to the gulf, and it will be a great stimulus to intellectual growth."

The gulf model has drawbacks, of course, and there's no guarantee that what works in America will work there. A good school does not just "borrow a curriculum or a few teachers from another prestigious university," says Mourad Ezzine, a Middle East specialist for the World Bank who oversaw its recent report on Arab education. With a limited pool of high-caliber students, he warns, the region may run into difficulty. Mary Ann Tetreault, who taught at many of the gulf's new schools on a Fulbright scholarship, says she could offer only "light versions" of her international-affairs courses, and warns that U.S. schools are "putting in programs that [local] kids can't succeed at" due to "basic skill issues," including limited math and science training and poor study habits.

None of those issues is unique to the gulf, however, or is likely to slow its push into higher education.

And there are signs that the boom will benefit everyone. "There are more people around the world in universities today than probably went to university in all of human history combined," says Allan Goodman, president of the New York-based Institute of International Education. "These new places will be competing with America for the best and the brightest, but there are a lot more best and brightest out there." In other words, competition may be growing—but the world is growing even faster.

© 2008

2008年8月16日 星期六

At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner

Essay

At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner

A. J. Mast for The New York Times

Sally Nichols, a teacher at Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis, uses the New Technology teaching method.


Published: August 16, 2008

COUNT me a technological optimist, but I have always thought that the people who advocate putting computers in classrooms as a way to transform education were well intentioned but wide of the mark. It’s not the problem, and it’s not the answer.

Yet as a new school year begins, the time may have come to reconsider how large a role technology can play in changing education. There are promising examples, both in the United States and abroad, and they share some characteristics. The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. Computing is an integral tool in all disciplines, always at the ready.

Web-based education software has matured in the last few years, so that students, teachers and families can be linked through networks. Until recently, computing in the classroom amounted to students doing Internet searches, sending e-mail and mastering word processing, presentation programs and spreadsheets. That’s useful stuff, to be sure, but not something that alters how schools work.

The new Web education networks can open the door to broader changes. Parents become more engaged because they can monitor their children’s attendance, punctuality, homework and performance, and can get tips for helping them at home. Teachers can share methods, lesson plans and online curriculum materials.

In the classroom, the emphasis can shift to project-based learning, a real break with the textbook-and-lecture model of education. In a high school class, a project might begin with a hypothetical letter from the White House that says oil prices are spiking, the economy is faltering and the president’s poll numbers are falling. The assignment would be to devise a new energy policy in two weeks. The shared Web space for the project, for example, would include the White House letter, the sources the students must consult, their work plan and timetable, assignments for each student, the assessment criteria for their grades and, eventually, the paper the team delivers. Oral presentations would be required.

The project-based approach, some educators say, encourages active learning and produces better performance in class and on standardized tests.

The educational bottom line, it seems, is that while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology.

“Unless you change how you teach and how kids work, new technology is not really going to make a difference,” said Bob Pearlman, a former teacher who is the director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

The foundation, based in Napa, Calif., has developed a model for project-based teaching and is at the forefront of the drive for technology-enabled reform of education. Forty-two schools in nine states are trying the foundation’s model, and their numbers are growing rapidly.

Behind the efforts, of course, are concerns that K-12 public schools are falling short in preparing students for the twin challenges of globalization and technological change. Worries about the nation’s future competitiveness led to the creation in 2002 of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a coalition whose members include the Department of Education and technology companies like Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell and Microsoft.

The government-industry partnership identifies a set of skills that mirror those that the New Technology Foundation model is meant to nurture. Those skills include collaboration, systems thinking, self-direction and communication, both online and in person.

State officials in Indiana took a look at the foundation’s model and offered travel grants for local teachers and administrators to visit its schools in California. Sally Nichols, an English teacher, came away impressed and signed up for the new project-based teaching program at her school, Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis.

Last year, Ms. Nichols and another teacher taught a biology and literature class for freshmen. (Cross-disciplinary courses are common in the New Technology model.) Typically, half of freshmen fail biology, but under the project-based model the failure rate was cut in half.

“There’s a lot of ownership by the kids in their work instead of teachers lecturing and being the givers of all knowledge,” Ms. Nichols explained. “The classes are just much more alive. They don’t sleep in class.”

IN Indiana, the number of schools using the foundation model will increase to six this year, and an additional dozen communities have signed up for the next year, said David Shane, a member of the state board of education. “It’s caught fire in Indiana, and we’ve got to have this kind of education to prepare our young people for the future in a global economy that is immersed in technology.”

The extra cost for schools that have adopted the New Technology model is about $1,000 per student a year, once a school is set up, says Mr. Pearlman of the foundation.

In England, where the government has promoted technology in schools for a decade, the experiment with technology-driven change in education is further along.

Five years ago, the government gave computers to students at two schools in high-crime neighborhoods in Birmingham. For the students, a Web-based portal is the virtual doorway for assignments, school social activities, online mentoring, discussion groups and e-mail. Even students who are suspended from school for a few days beg not to lose their access to the portal, says Sir Mark Grundy, 49, the executive principal of Shireland Collegiate Academy and the George Salter Collegiate Academy. Today, the schools are among the top in the nation in yearly improvements in students’ performance in reading and math tests.

Sir Mark says he is convinced that advances in computing, combined with improved understanding of how to tailor the technology to different students, can help transform education.

“This is the best Trojan horse for causing change in schools that I have ever seen,” he said.

2008年8月15日 星期五

The Choice They Made

Op-Ed Columnist

The Choice They Made


Published: June 30, 2008

Half a century ago the philosopher Leo Strauss remarked that the passage in which the Declaration of Independence proclaims its self-evident truths “has frequently been quoted, but, by its weight and its elevation, it is made immune to the degrading effects of the excessive familiarity which breeds contempt and of misuse which breeds disgust.”

I’ve had occasion to test this claim. The last few years, we’ve spent July Fourth at the house of friends who have had the assembled company read the entire declaration. It’s a longer document than one thinks; the charges against the king take quite a while to get through.

But I can report from firsthand experience that the declaration as a whole, and not just its most famous phrases, remains remarkably immune to the degrading effects of excessive familiarity. I was doubtful at first that reading the declaration would enhance the overall beer-and-hamburger experience of the day. But the effort has proved more thought-provoking and patriotism-stirring than I expected.

So this year, perhaps pressing our luck (and patience), I’m thinking of proposing the reading of an additional text: Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Roger Weightman of June 24, 1826.

With regret, the 83-year-old Jefferson wrote that his ill health compelled him to decline the invitation to travel to Washington for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of American independence. But then, perhaps knowing this would be his final word, Jefferson sets forth in stirring prose his faith in the universal significance of the Declaration of Independence:

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government.”

Jefferson claims his faith is based on the progress of enlightenment. He is confident that “all eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.” Indeed, “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view, the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”

Jefferson may have been overly sanguine that the spread of the light of science would necessarily strengthen the cause of human rights. But even the optimistic Jefferson was well aware that the enemies of liberty and equality could regroup and resist — certainly abroad, perhaps even at home.

That’s one reason he trusted that “the annual return of this day” would “forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.” Our devotion — and the sacrifices inspired by that devotion — are needed to make effectual the palpable truth of human equality.

The fate of equality, Jefferson makes clear, also depends on those who see further than, and act first on behalf of, their fellow citizens. In the letter, Jefferson pays tribute to his fellow signers — “that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword.” He wishes he could meet with the few of that band who still survived “to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.”

So the signers of the declaration made the bold and doubtful choice for independence. Their fellow citizens ratified the choice. But they might have been slow to act if the worthies had not moved first.

For, as the declaration itself notes, “all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” The people are conservative. Liberty sometimes requires the bold leadership of a few individuals.

Perhaps that’s why the representatives, who have signed on behalf of “the good people” of the colonies, “mutually pledge to each other” their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in support of the declaration. Their pledge isn’t to the people. The pledge is an individual one by the signers to one another.

And the pledge has to be supported by a sense of honor — even of sacred honor. The declaration’s assertion of equal rights, one may say, is supported by what is necessarily unequal, the sense of honor of those acting on the people’s behalf.

Shortly after writing the letter to Weightman, Jefferson died at home in Monticello. On that very same day — the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the declaration, July 4, 1826 — in Quincy, Mass., Jefferson’s fellow drafter and signer John Adams also died. Yet as Adams reportedly said on his death bed, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”