Mike Falick's Blog

Did You Know 3.0: The Latest Update of Karl Fisch's "Did You Know Video"

On July 7, 2007, I posted Did You Know 2.0, which graphically demonstrated the impact of global competition on today's American children.  Below is the latest version of Did You Know, released at the end of 2008.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Issues Its Call to Action: Policy Recommendations on Preparing Americans to Triumph in the Global Skills Race

Today I came across The Partnership for 21st Century Skills which I think has accurately stated one of the main things missing from today's high stakes testing regimen, the lack of focus on 21st century skills. 

The Partnership has issued a Transition Brief for the incoming administration of President-elect Obama entitled Policy Recommendations on Preparing Americans to Triumph in the Global Skills Race which is a call to action on this issue.

Here is how the Partnership's website describes the issue with one of the best graphics I have seen (click on the graphic to enlarge):

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has developed a unified, collective vision for 21st century learning that can be used to strengthen American education. The key elements of 21st century learning are represented in the graphic and descriptions below. The graphic represents both 21st century skills student outcomes (as represented by the arches of the rainbow) and 21st century skills support systems (as represented by the pools at the bottom):

21ST CENTURY STUDENT OUTCOMES:

The elements described in this section as “21st century student outcomes” (represented by the rainbow) are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes

2. Learning and Innovation Skills 

• Creativity and Innovation Skills
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
• Communication and Collaboration Skills

3. Information, Media and Technology Skills

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• ICT Literacy
  

4. Life and Career Skills

• Flexibility & Adaptability
• Initiative & Self-Direction
• Social & Cross-Cultural Skills
  
• Productivity & Accountability
  
• Leadership & Responsibility

Houston PBS to Air "2 Million Minutes" - This is a Must Watch Documentary

A few weeks ago, Houston's Channel 8 and the Houston A+ Challenge presented the first Houston screening of the documentary 2 Million Minutes.  If you are unfamiliar with this documentary, click here (or look after the jump) for a short synopsis (more information is available on the 2 Million Minutes website).

Channel 8 is broadcasting 2 Million Minutes on three different days:

Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 8-9pm
Sunday, October 5, 2008, 6-7 pm
Friday, October 10, 2008, 1-2 pm

I strongly urge you to spend an hour watching this compelling documentary.

I received an email from Channel 8 that suggests the following post-viewing discussion suggestions for classroom or dinner table conversation:

• What motivates each student in the film?
• How did the teaching and learning that you saw in the film look different in each country? How did it look the same?
• What did parental/family involvement look like in each of these students’ lives?
• From your unique vantage point, what does this film say about education and global competition in the 21st century economy?
• What could we apply from this film to make students in the Houston area more competitive in a global economy?
• Teachers: As you look at your own scope and sequence, which components are helping your students gain a competitive edge in the global economy?  What could be improved?
• Principals: Does your school encourage students and teachers to apply a global perspective to learning? What could improve?

Are You Smarter than an 8th Grader: Take this Quiz to See How You Stack Up Against the World's 8th Graders

Edin08's Strong American Schools website has posted a quiz that allows you to see how you would fare compared to 8th graders throughout the world.  I have embedded the quiz below, so you can simply click on Math or Science to take the quiz.  Good luck!

Did You Know 2.0: A Very Good Update of Karl Fisch's "Did You Know Video" Shows Just How Fast the World is Changing

Many of you have probably seen Karl Fisch’s landmark Did you Know video.  Here's is a very good update of that video called Did You Know 2.0.  As with the original, it is eye-opening.

Curriki: A New Website Provides a Place Where Teachers from Across the Globe can Share Curricula and Lesson Plans

This month's eSchool News includes an article that describes a new website called Curriki which is designed to allow educators from anywhere on the planet to share curricula, lesson plans, and ideas. 

Sign up is free, and is available to anyone, including parents.

A search on the website for "science" yielded this site which provides ecology games, this site loaded with award winning science projects, and this site which contains a collection of scores of good educational sites for kids, teachers, and parents includes links to education portals, lesson plans, math, science, social science, nature, health, animals, dinosaurs, insects, reading, and language arts.

A search for "educational technology" yielded a website dedicated to a webquest about the bald eagle in the midwestern United States, particularly along the upper and central lands along the Mississippi River, and this website that contains lesson plan that cover whales.

Current featured content includes:

Free High School Science Texts (View Chapters): FHSST has posted segments of their open source science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10 - 12 on Curriki. These books are the creations of a South Africa-based world-wide open source community.

World Leadership Corps: WLC is a service program dedicated to helping create the leaders of tomorrow. Volunteers are currently working in China, Sweden andthe Dominican Republic developing programs to raise awareness of global issues among local populations.

The Tapestry Project (View Stories): The Tapestry Project, under the aegis of the UN Millennium Project, is encouraging young leaders to create digital stories to raise awareness of key issues in their countries.

NROC (View Lessons): NROC is an online community of educators, designers, technologists, and administrators working together to develop high-quality online education that is available to everyone.

World Issue Maps: A Graphic Demonstration of the Power of Globalization

The International Networks Archive has created a number of maps that demonstrate the power of globalization and the interdependencies created as a result.  Here are the maps:

• THE GLOBAL ARMS TRADE
• THE GLOBAL TOBACCO TRADE
• GOVERNMENT RED TAPE
• TRANSPORTATION TODAY
• THE COMING WATER WARS
• THE GLOBAL MOVIE BIZ
• HOW MANY COUNTRIES ARE INVOLVED IN THAT CUP OF STARBUCKS COFFEE AND MCDONALDS RESTAURANTS AROUND THE WORLD

College Focus: Harlem High School Volunteer College Advisor Nina Hurwitz Shares Her School's Strategy for Success

This recent Education Week article clearly articulates a point I have been making for a long time - assuring equal opportunity for all students to attend college is an economic necessity.  In Competing for College: All High School Senior Deserve a Fair Shot at a Good School, Nina Hurwitz, a volunteer college advisor at a Harlem high school, discusses the incredible success in a very challenging environment of placing nearly all of its graduates in college.  Much like the success experience in Hidalgo I.S.D. (previously discussed in this blog post), it appears that some very basic support infrastructure can lead to tremendous results.  This infrastructure has academic strength at its core, and is complemented by a strong college counseling program.  As Ms. Hurwitz confirms

Minority students often face huge obstacles: poverty, family disruption, language deficits, and inferior schooling. But my experience in Harlem has convinced me that urban high schools can open the door to college for these students, if the schools are willing and able to provide a demanding academic curriculum and a solid guidance program. . . . For disadvantaged urban students—even more than for their suburban and private school counterparts—effective college guidance, offered on site, is critical to successful college placement.

Following our Board's goal-setting session on Thursday, it appears that Spring Branch is marching in this direction as a key 5 year goal.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Are We "Learning to Lose?"

"Learning to Lose" is the provacative title of a very powerful editorial written by Norman R. Augustine, the retired chairman and chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corporation and one of the Chairman of the National Academies that appears in today's Washington Post.  Mr. Augustine echos the sentiments expressed by the National Academies in late September in which it issued its report entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm (pdf).  (See my previous posts on Rising Above the Gathering Storm here and here).

Mr. Augustine illuminates the issue further, however, and casts a bright light on our impending national crisis:

Workers in virtually every economic sector now face competitors who live just a mouse click away in Ireland, Finland, India, China, Australia and dozens of other nations.

Soon the only jobs that will not be open to worldwide competition are those that require near physical contact between the parties to a transaction. Visitors to an office not far from the White House are greeted by a receptionist on a flat-screen display that controls access to the building and arranges contacts; she is in Pakistan. U.S. companies each morning receive software that was written in India overnight in time to be tested in the United States and returned to India for further refinement that same evening. Drawings for American architectural firms are produced in Brazil. Call-center employees in India are being taught to speak with a Midwestern accent. . . .

In China and Japan, 59 percent and 66 percent, respectively, of undergraduates receive their degrees in science and engineering, compared with 32 percent in the United States.

Mr. Augustine reiterates the National Academies' call for

1. The recruitment of 10,000 new science and math teachers each year through the awarding of competitive scholarships
2. Improving the skills of a quarter-million current teachers through enhanced training and education
3. Establishing 25,000 competitive science, mathematics, engineering and technology undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 graduate fellowships
4. Boosting U.S. government funding for scientific and technological innovation research by 10 percent annually over the next several years, with primary attention devoted to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics and information sciences
5. The creation of the federal government to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which would support out-of-the-box, transformative research aimed at ending our crippling dependence on foreign sources of energy, and
6. Permanent tax incentives for U.S.-based innovation.

This follows closely on the heels of Thomas Friedman's recent appearance on CNBC in which he said that in the flat world everything "left brain" can be outsourced.  He called for a focus on "right brain" learning.

It is increasingly apparent that the drum beat highlighted by Mr. Friedman in The World is Flat is making headway.  Several Senators, including Sen. Alexander (R-Ten.), the former University of Tennessee president and U.S. education secretary, who, in response to the National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm said

My hope is that the president will become interested and make this the subject of his State of the Union address and the focus of his remaining three-year term in office.

As regular readers of this blog know, I have heeded the call to action issued by Mr. Friedman, et. al., and am a strong advocate for a substantial increase in focus on math and science in our schools.

Wikipedia Presents: Thomas Friedman and The World is Flat

Wikipedia is another of the many web-based resources that have already changed the world.  For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know I believe strongly that Thomas Friedman's views of education and the future are critical to the success of the United States in Friedman's flat world.  Wikipedia has extremely thorough postings on Mr. Friedman here and The World is Flat here.

Note: Wikipedia's parent, the Wikimedia Foundation has posted over 12,000 free collaborative textbooks. 

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Wikipedia -- As defined by Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be added or changed by anyone with an internet connection. The project began on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The English-language version of Wikipedia