school leaders and coherent curriculum

“In the absence of great school leaders, it is difficult, if not impossible,  to attract, support, and retain high quality faculty. Schools need a rigorous and coherent curriculum, well-designed systems to support instruction in every classroom, and a powerful school wide culture grounded in high expectations for everyone – students, faculty and staff.  Putting these building blocks in place and ensuring they  work well  together overtime requires enlightened, effective leadership.” Peyser, James, Brain Drain, Whey so many talented educators are leaving for New York, Boston sunday globe, Sept. 14, 2008.

Why is it that these ingredients are well recognized as vital for K-12 but not for higher ed?

getting faculty to use blogs

I’m working with a UMB faculty member who is teaching an online physics course for four semesters. The course currently consists of readings and discussions. I’ve made numerous suggestions to him that he should allow students to use blogs so that can reflect on the learning process in the course but to date he’s resisted the idea. In the fall we’ll be launching a blogging network at Umass Boston. I’m hoping once he starts using blogs himself or a the very least sees other folks in his departments using them that he’ll start warming up to the idea.

educational widgets and gadgets

I’m here at the google i/o conference in San Francisco and thinking about educational widgets and gadgets because I’m producing a SIG on this topic for NERCOMP in the fall. Open social will allow  youtube and picassa feeds to  be added to blogger but also any open html files. This could have a variety of uses for course curricula.

google apps can also be used in a variety of ways and are not available as an app in facebook. Students who form a study group in facebook could collaborate on the development of a document while using a voice app like skpe or another voice app in face book to talk each other through the development of an idea.

capasities vs. skills

Last night I attended a 75 reunion event for Bennington College. Bennington received a $20 million dollar donation from an alumnus and the college is using it to establish a center for curriculum innovation. In her address, the President, Elizabeth Coleman talked about developing capacities in students – the ability to be improvisational for example and also the idea of rethinking the 14 week course. they are thinking of learning in a more modular way. If developing a capacity only takes 4 weeks than it will only be a 4 week course. It was really refreshing to learn that as an institution they are rethinking their mission and the pedagogies that support in from ground up. Bravo!

open access journals movement

I’m excited by the growing momentum in the open access movement in Higher ed.  A couple of weeks ago Harvard announced the launch of “e-prints” which allows faculty to publish their paper drafts online in an open access web site and this week a professor at Indiana University in Bloomington announced the Museum Anthropology Review where anthropologist can post their papers in a open access web site.

The movement benefits the free flow of ideas and will entail some restructuring of the organizational models of Higher ed.