Good Value Colleges

Today's tough economic times make college decisions even more difficult. If it wasn't tough enough deciding between in-state or out-of-state schools, public or private, big or small, liberal arts or not, now your (or your parent's) pocket book will play a big role in where you decide to continue your education. The University of California schools have raised tuition 10% this year; even our beloved community colleges have increased their sticker price. The Ivies have been - and always will be - outrageously expensive. (The average hot liberal arts college costs $39,000/year, and four years at Harvard will set you back over $200,000!)

So where can you find the best bang for your buck? Or, in today's ed-speak, the best learning for your lifestyle? Check out these 10 interesting, quirky, yet very cost-effective colleges that Mother Jones Magazine put out this month. Here's a few highlights:

Berea College (Kentucky)
Tuition: Free!
All 1,549 students get free tuition for four years. Some live in the Ecovillage, environmentally friendly housing that features a "permaculture food forest" and a contraption that makes sewage so clean you can swim in it.

New College of Florida (Sarasota)
Tuition: $26,300/$4,700 in state
The Sarah Lawrence of the South favors tutorials and evaluations over giant lectures and letter grades. In the past 14 years, it's cranked out more Fulbright Scholars per student than Harvard, Stanford, or Yale.

California State University - Monterey Bay (Seaside)
Tuition: $3,845 + $339 per unit
The nearby Monterey Bay serves as the classroom for the school's popular Environmental Science, Technology & Policy major.

The University of Minnesota-Morris
Tuition: $8,830
This public liberal arts college has academic chops and green-energy cred: By 2010, it expects to go carbon neutral with help from an on-site wind turbine, which already produces 60 percent of the power on campus.

The College of New Jersey (Ewing)
Tuition: $16,825/$8,718 in state
Students at this small public college can make a four-year commitment to participate in service projects in return for a scholarship that covers up to full tuition. And they swear that the annual LollaNoBooza bash isn't totally lame.

So as you can see, lots of good colleges, lots of good cost. Harvard will give away $150 million this year in scholarships, but the University of Kansas, which has a fraction of the endowment that Harvard has, hands out $25 million every year. Point being, don't let this financial mess get in the way of finding the right college for your specific needs, interests, and budget. It might take some more research, some more patience, and some more time, but in the end, the next four years are well worth it.

The Importance of a Foreign Language

This week I decided to test the prior Spanish knowledge of my seventh grade students by asking them to interview a partner in the language and then write a newspaper article about their subject. I didn't expect them to know how to conjugate every verb or even form complete sentences in Spanish. What I was looking for was creativity and their ability to use the book or ask questions when they needed help. Thankfully, many of them did and I enjoyed walking around the room and seeing the learning process in action.

The experience of having a foreign language class is invaluable. However, a recent article in the New York Times suggests that as schools face budget cuts, foreign language classes are among the first to go.

From the article:

"And in New Jersey, the Ridgewood district is replacing its three elementary school Spanish teachers with Rosetta Stone, an interactive computer program that cost $70,000, less than half their combined salaries."

I believe that a teacher who inspires students to learn not just the basics of Spanish but also its utility in the real world is far more beneficial than any software program. I try my hardest to tell my students that Spanish will benefit them beyond their wildest dreams in the future. I explain that in California it is vital to at least have conversational knowledge of Spanish because it will help them communicate with the growing Hispanic population. Knowing a foreign language will also give them a leg up on the competition in the global economy.

I am fortunate to teach at a school that includes foreign language in its curriculum. The unfortunate part of my job is that I do not see all of my students every day because of a rotating schedule. This makes it difficult to gauge the progress of my students. However, I make the most of it by inspiring creativity and interest in the language. I believe an assignment that tests their knowledge is a solid foundation on which to build their Spanish skills.

Obama's Back To School Message

President Obama's back to school message to our country's students may have been overshadowed this week by his health care message to Congress, but to those of us who care deeply about the future of our society, it could not be more pertinent. The President spends most of his time grappling with issues in education on a very broad policy level. He, of course, should continue to do this, but it was very good to see that he recognizes that all his work - indeed, all work at any level above the classroom - is ultimately intended to serve individual students. And ultimately, education is a very personal endeavor.

Here are some of the take home points from Obama's Back To School message:

1. School helps you discover what you're good at. Sometimes you don't know what you're good at or what you like until you try. School - and high school in particular - is a place to try everything out. Everyone has preferences, but it's impossible to know what you prefer until you try a wider range of things. My sister, for example, never much liked studying languages. She took an American Sign Language class in college as a way of meeting her distribution requirements, and ended up majoring in ASL and becoming an interpreter.

2. You need to have an education for a good job. It's often a student's gripe that their coursework has no relevance to their lives, that they'll never use it in the "real world" (and as an aside, what's so un-real about school?), and so on. What they are often missing is that the process is itself a valuable thing that they are learning. And it is exactly these processes, what are often called "21st Century Skills" or "soft skills" that employers are most often seeking.

Or, if you'd rather, we can let the data speak for itself:

3. There is no excuse for not trying.  This may be the most important thing that Obama said.  While it is true that some people have certain social advantages over other people, nothing is insurmountable.  Each of our destinies lie in our own hands, and while we have to contend with the randomness and chaos of the universe from time to time, each of us ultimately charts our own course.  Our success in school and in life, though, depends on whether or not we try.  Or, in the words of a great 20th Century philosopher, you can make it if you try.

This sort of empowerment, the knowledge that each of our education is up to us, is at the same time a heavy responsibility.  Teachers, principals, administrators, Senators, Presidents, and tutoring companies will do everything they can to do set students up for success, but ultimately, the responsibility of education falls onto the shoulders of every student.

Disruptive Innovation

I'm reading a good book called Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen. His previous books introduced the idea of "disruptive innovation." Think about the computer revolution, and how Apple's personal computers of the 1980s and '90s disrupted IBM's mainframe computers (which filled entire rooms) and Digital Equipment Corporation's minicomputers (which, though smaller than mainframes, still cost $200,000) of the 1950s and '60s. He explains,

a disruptive innovation is not a breakthrough improvement. Instead of sustaining the traditional improvement trajectory in the established plane of competition, it disrupts the trajectory by bringing to the market a product or service that actually is not as good as what companies historically had been selling... by making the product affordable and simple to use, the disruptive innovation benefits people who had been unable to consume... people we call "non-consumers."

Christensen goes on to explain several other interesting points. For one, disruptive innovations take root in simple, undemanding applications, where definitions of quality and improvement mean very different things (the PC was not as big or powerful as minicomputers, but they were way less expensive and easy to use, thus creating demand in a market that was never there). Secondly, think about what society has determined to be the purpose of schools, and note the different metrics that we use to define quality and improvement:

• Job #1: Preserve the democracy and inculcate democratic values. Along with teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, early educators taught ethics and morals through mostly Greek and Roman history. School was not for everyone, but rather to assimilate everyone into American values and culture.

• Job #2: Provide something for every student. Honors courses, APs, special education classes, ESL education, vocational studies, and extracurricular activities expanded to provide something for everyone. Schools could no longer be de jure separate but equal after the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. (Although by all accounts they were - and many still remain today - de facto separate but equal.)
  

• Job #3: Keep America competitive. The landmark 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, "A Nation At Risk," began solemnly: "Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world." The report said the United States was losing ground to the Japanese and Europeans, and as evidence, cited data showing subpar performance on standardized tests.
  

• Job #4: Eliminate poverty. The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 no longer made it good enough to raise average test scores. Individual metrics had to rise as well: for low-income students, minority students, ESL students, students with documented learning differences, and more. The goal posts were moved yet again.

It's unfair and nearly impossible to continually improve if we continually change how we measure improvement. Chistensen says, "the public schools have been required to do the equivalent of rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight." So what's the disruptive innovation that will change the way the world learns - according to all measurements? It takes root in two phases: computer-based learning, and student-centric technology. We know we all learn differently, so why don't we teach differently? Today's software can accommodate different paces and styles of learning, so students can choose differently ways to learn the material. He goes on: "Whereas computer-based learning is disruptive relative to the monolithic mode of teacher-led instruction, student-centric technology is disruptive relative to personal tutors. Tutors today are largely limited to the wealthy; and for those privileged few, good tutors come as close as possible to helping students learn each subject in ways that match the way their brains are wired to learn."

My final point: tutoring doesn't have to be limited to the wealthy. In fact, by some estimates, I've heard of schools that claim 60% of their students have tutors (I'd say 15-20% is more accurate across your average school, if there is such a thing). In any case, tutors cater to the individual needs of their students - so whether they're studying for an AP exam (that their school doesn't offer), writing an essay for their college application (that their college counselor doesn't have time to read), or trying to understand the difference between sine, cosine, or tangent (because their teacher has a class of 30 students and it's tough for even the best teacher to reach all 30 kids), a tutor can focus on student-centric learning. Eventually, education companies will develop creative software that adapts to students' learning styles (see the Florida Virtual School and Apex Learning) and questions answered (see Knewton and Grockit, or anyone who's ever taken the GRE). I still maintain that Web 2.0 is only half the picture - in Tutorpedia's hybrid tutoring model, you work with a tutor to deliver the maximum potential of student-centered technology - someone who can cater to individual learning styles and abilities, all through personal relationships and shared experiences.

To New Beginnings: Classroom Management

I stood in front of the 36 faces staring back at me. They were watching my every move as I took roll and explained my plan for the class. Nervousness consumed me. I'd never had to get the attention of so many students at one time, let alone try to teach them a lesson. I was used to a much smaller group. I took a deep breath and explained my syllabus. My school year had begun.

I'd been hired to work as a junior high Spanish teacher at a private school in Danville at the beginning of the summer. My girlfriend's sister, a teacher at the school, had suggested I try my hand at the position since I speak Spanish and have tutoring experience. I showed up to give an impromptu lesson for a class of sixth graders. The Principal and other teachers told me repeatedly that they would be looking at my classroom management skills. The term "classroom management" seemed almost foreign to me since I had no formal training as a teacher. I got up in front of the class and was able to engage them in an activity where I taught them some summer Spanish vocab words.

Fast forward a few months and it was finally the first day of school. I've always had a love for the Spanish language and culture so the goal of my lesson was to inspire my students to find that same love. I showed the students a power point presentation of my year in Spain that showcased a variety of pictures of my life in Madrid. I was excited to show my presentation but was not prepared for what would happen to disrupt my plan.

One class of eighth graders would not quiet down and give me the respect and attention I deserved. They talked while I was trying to explain my syllabus. They made jokes while I was giving my presentation. When I tried to give them all Spanish names, some tried to be funny by picking names like "Jose Jalapeno" just to mess with me. I'm usually very patient, but this class pushed me so far that I had to raise my voice just to compete with the volume of thirty-six voices. Since I was a new teacher and had no training in classroom management, it made it all the more difficult to try and regain control.

It has been a few weeks since that first day and things have already calmed down quite a bit in that particular class. I've learned never to raise my voice in an attempt to talk over them. I've also let them know that I'm there to help them learn Spanish but at the same time, I have no problem zeroing in on a talker and asking for their attention in front of everyone. It's especially effective if I give the order in Spanish because I'm guaranteed a reaction AND their attention. It will probably take me all year to develop an effective classroom management system, and for that matter, learn all of my students' names, but now that I've let them know I mean business, I feel that I actually have time to teach Spanish.

From Day One

Day One of school can - and should - have the feeling of a spiritual cleaning. When I was teaching high school, the first day of every school year was a renewing experience for every student. Every one of my students started fresh. Nobody had late homework assignments, nobody had made careless mistakes on test questions, nobody had amassed tardies or unexcused absences. There were no blemishes on any of my students' records whatsoever. Everyone had an equally fair shot at earning high marks.

This, of course, didn't last for many of my students. In the subsequent 180 days of school, homework was forgotten, tardies were accumulated, and mistakes were made. This is to be expected, of course; nobody is perfect. Students expected similar things of themselves, it seemed. Many of them fully expected to be less than perfect (some far less than perfect) when it came to school, and for many of them, this was not something to worry about. It wasn't something to worry about, at least, until the end of the quarter when grades were due.

Everyone who looks after a young person or teenager can attest to the fact that they often don't face the consequences of their actions (or inactions) until the consequences are imminent. The homework assignment that was missed in the second week of school does not seem to be of great consequence, as (goes the young person's thinking) there will be plenty of time to make up that lost assignment. The truth is something slightly different. When students do come to teachers asking if they can make up or revise work, it almost always happens in the eleventh hour, when time is short, teachers are stressed, and grades hang in the balance. At this point, it's sometimes too late.

To the students of the world, here's a little secret from the teacher's lounge: with rare exception, homework due on the first week of school counts exactly as much towards your grade as homework on the last week of the semester. Big projects and tests will count more than daily homework, of course, but a one night assignment due on September 4th is generally weighed the same in your teacher's gradebook as a one night assingment due May 25th. There is no warm up, it all counts. And moreover, you won't be able to make up the assignment due on September 4 at the end of the semester.

What does this mean for students? It means that from Day One, while you are struggling to break out of your summer sleep habits and your record remains relatively unblemished, be vigilant about your school work! If you miss an assignment or hand in homework late, do not wait until even the end of the week (and certainly don't wait until the end of the semester) to do something about it! Stay on top of things from Day One. This will save you (and your teacher) a great deal of unnecessary stress when grades are due.

We at Tutorpedia want to wish every student a very successful and fruitful school year, and hope that students develop and internalize vigilant work habits from Day One, when their records are unblemished, everything is possible, and they feel like they can do no wrong.

Jefferson on Education

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix, says that "we measure education by how well writing is learned. As I've already noted, this is a profoundly democratic feature of our creative culture: we tell everyone they should learn how to speak as well as how to listen." Not only how to speak well and listen well, but to articulate arguments well. To "remix" an idea, so to speak, to create your own. You can believe in intellectual property, as Shepard Fairey does to defend his use and re-use of an AP photograph for his iconic Obama portrait, but also believe in the ability to share ideas without lessening yours.

Thomas Jefferson, no stranger to democratic features, puts it quite lyrically in an 1813 letter: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature..."

A great article in Wired by Daniel Roth illustrates the power of Geeks in reforming and remixing education. By owning their own schooling and teaching, they become "possessed," and excel in their academics, especially their reading and writing. The same demographic that usually graduates 50% of its students in traditional public schools, instead graduates 100% from an exemplar "Geek" high school, High Tech High.

Math, Science, and the Humanities

Mark Slouka's recent article in Harper's Magazine, "Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school," poses several important questions: "What do we teach, and why?... What do our kids need to know today?" According to Slouka, "What is taught, at any given time, in any culture, is an expression of what that culture considers important... In our time, orthodoxy is economic." He continues, "Education in America today is almost exclusively about the GDP. It's about investing in our human capital... It's about ensuring the the United States does not fall from its privileged perch in the global economy." Further in the article, he asks another probing question: "Why is every Crisis in American Education cast as an economic threat and never a civic one?" He concludes that we have no "language" for it, no "civic indicators" of political vulnerability. Yet what could be more politically equivalent to runaway inflation or soaring unemployment than the fact that 2/3 of college graduates cannot read a text and draw rational inferences from it!

Slouka's argument contends that American education has a long-standing love affair with math and science - "so often are they spoken of in the same breath, they've begun to feel singular" - at the expense of the humanities. Why? Because "mathandscience" is everything we want: a solid return on capital investment, a proven route to success. The evidence is surely there: The American Competitiveness Initiative calls for $50 billion in research grants to math and science over the next 10 years; the federal government will pay the cost of finding 30,000 new math and science teachers; and the New York City Department of Education announced $15,000 in incentives to lure teachers in math and science to the city's schools.

I'm a born and bread "mathandscience" teacher, but I see his point, and it troubles me. Marcus Eure, an English teacher at Brewster High School in New York, contends, "we want our students to take into their interactions with others, into their readings, into their private thoughts, depth of experience and a willingness to be wrong. Only a study of the humanities provides that." He's not alone in his thinking. Harvard president and historian Drew Faust, Mellon Foundation president Don Randel, and former University of Chicago dean Danielle Allen, all fight for more humanities education - to "dislocate the complacent mind" - to teach students to challenge not only what they are being told, but how they are being told. At the end of the day, Eure reasons, "every aspect of life... hinges in some way on the ability to understand and empathize with others, to challenge one's beliefs, to strive for reason and clarity."

High school, and college for sure, should not have to be about choosing between "mathandscience" and the humanities. They have lived side by side for thousands of years, and will continue to. Critical thinking, problem solving, analytical reasoning - these are all part of the Scientific Method, yes - but they can also be applied to the humanities, to thinking about our own humanity. We can make hypotheses, design experiments, gather data, and form conclusions about the age of the Earth; no doubt we can get thousands of dollars to do so. But that grant money - the scholarship, fellowship, or college degree - won't translate into anything if you can't articulate and defend your arguments, if you can't dislocate your complacent mind.

Competing and Collaborating

The college admissions game is a very competitive one. But that's really just one symptom of the larger beast: school itself is a very competitive place. Those who have successfully made it through many of school's academic hurdles will be the first ones to say that such competitiveness doesn't end once one matriculates at the college of their dreams. The life of an academic is a constant competition - for grant money, for tenure, to get your paper or book out before anyone else does.

But why all the competition? Is learning a race that needs to be won? Perhaps it's a simple byproduct of the economic realities of higher education: lots and lots of people all want to be granted acceptance to a select few number of colleges. In other words, when it comes to college admissions, supply is low, and demand is high. Or perhaps it has something to do with personal recognition - trying to be the person whose name is selected for this medal or that prize. Or to put a more positive spin on the dilemma, perhaps a degree of competition will bring the best out in all competitors, push students to learn and achieve more than if they were simply given a teacher and a book and told to learn. Whatever the reason, all this competition has turned school (and applying to school) into something quite stressful for students.

Competition is inherent in most of the structures that school utilizes. The admissions process is an enormous competition, especially for top-tier schools (it has also spawned a college admissions industry, itself highly competitive). The types of assessments and grading methods that most schools try to use incite competition. Awards are given out, class rank is calculated, and GPAs are amassed, all to somehow enhance one's chances at future successes. The No Child Left Behind law was written primarily because of concerns of "21st century global competitiveness." And all of this, of course, is modeled in the post-school world, where the United States has been relying heavily on competition to encourage innovation and economic growth, and its citizens take open-market competition as a given in their individual lives.

Small amounts of healthy competition can be good, but competition taken to the level students experience today isn't. Learning isn't a race, and making it into one renders the runners fatigued, edgy, distrustful of their peers, and not always eager to practice. There must be some sort of alternative, one that involves collaborating with our peers and working towards a common end goal, one that involves some sort of shared experience.

This isn't a concept familiar to those of us who have ground (or are grinding our way) through the machinery of our current school system, but it is one for which we should advocate. Thinking globally, it may be the case that schools won't change until society (and what society values) changes, but we can do something. At Tutorpedia, it is our goal to instill a love of learning and a belief that the school experience is itself intrinsically valuable into every student we work with. We put a great deal of stock into the collaborative relationships we form with our students. And in the coming months, we are preparing to introduce a series of small-group workshops in which students will be encouraged to work with each other - not against each other - in order to make, do, and understand things that are themselves very much worth making, doing, or understanding. Experiences such as these in students' lives can be powerful reminders that what we do in school is bigger than what our college applications will say.

The Future of Textbooks

Consider this from a recent NY Times article: "In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and math texts with free, 'open source' digital versions. With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And given that students already get so much information from the Internet, iPods and Twitter feeds, he said, digital texts could save them from lugging around 'antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks.'”

If our governor is aligned with "free, open-source" textbooks, we must be on to something. The article makes a good point about the possibility of widening the achievement gap between rich and poor: Because there is still a great digital divide (the divide between those who have access to digital information technologies and those who don't), the potential problems of putting everything online are not unfounded. However, what the Times article misses, and what I maintain, is that this is just one aspect of moving education into the 21st century. Web 2.0 technologies should not replace traditional models of teaching - that is, of the personal relationships that develop between teacher and student - they should only enhance it. And as computer prices drop dramatically (netbooks are now as low as $299!), it will be easier (and cheaper) to purchase individual laptops for students instead of individual, "antiquated" textbooks.

Continuing the shift to online curriculum, another recent article talks about the new market of renting textbooks to college students. Again, instead of spending hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars on buying new textbooks, students can now rent from Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. Smaller outfits such as Cengage Learning, Chegg, and BookRenter are doing similar things, with publishers like McGraw-Hill creating partnerships with these distributors to enhance their market share. A letter to the editor in response to this article found some skepticism about the benefits of digital textbooks, claiming that brilliant graphics and "concentrated learning" can never be replaced by these web-based books.

Regardless of how we may relate to the Internet, it is changing the way we live and learn. High schools and colleges are beginning to catch on to this trend, and I believe the only way to keep up will be to make curriculum free, online, and open source.

Learning By Experience

School, traditionally, is a place where a lot is talked about. That, really, is the function of schools - they allow us to learn about things. Specifically, school is a good place to learn about things that we don't or can't experience firsthand. Some of these things are really far away (the moon), some happened long before we were born (Ancient Greece), some are really, really big (black holes), and some are really, really small (atoms and molecules). Some things are abstract ideas (democracy) and others are models for things that exist in the real world (right triangles). School is the place where we get to learn about all of these things that we would not otherwise know about.

What, though, if we aren't content just learning about something? What if we want to learn the thing itself, and learn it directly? If I want to learn about Australia, for example, the best way for me to do that would be to actually go to Australia. Then, Uluru becomes more than a picture of a rock I saw in a magazine, and the Great Barrier Reef becomes more than the subject of a PBS broadcast. Going to Australia, of course, is not realistic for every student that learns about the country in school, so school has to suffice. But the point remains: instead of learning about something, it is much more effective to experience that thing firsthand.

Traditional models of school haven't been very good at implementing this common sense idea. Lately, though, there has been more of a push towards alternative models of learning, which include project-based learning, alternative forms of assessments (such as performance assessments and portfolio assessments), and internship and the integration of apprenticeship and internships. Each of these initiatives moves students away from learning about something and pushes them closer to authentic learning experiences. Despite its new "alternative" label, this is nothing new. Outward Bound has been engaged in experiential learning from its inception, and education pioneer John Dewey, who wrote extensively on experiential education around the turn of the 20th century. Many institutions of higher learning, such as medical school and law school, operate on apprenticeship and mentorship models. And middle and high schools are increasingly headed in this direction.

Gaining experience is a familiar topic to many college-bound students, but just as learning should not be thought of as a means to an end, the experience someone puts down on their college application or job resume should not be thought of as a hoop they have to jump through. The experience is itself a very authentic way to learn something, perhaps the best way to learn something.

At Tutorpedia, we are getting ready to offer a series of workshops for students that embody this idea. These workshops will be ideal environments in which small groups of students can experience something firsthand, and learn a great deal from it. Topics will range from recording original music to learning how to write essays - but the common thread will be that student's won't just learn about their topic; they will actually do it.

Remixing Education

Anya Kamenetz has a great new article in Fast Company, "Who Needs Harvard?", where she argues many of the same points in my recent post on Free Education: "Free online courses, Wiki universities, Facebook-style tutoring networks--American higher education is being transformed by a cadre of Web-savvy edupunks." There are hundreds if not thousands of digital education models in the ether, and she highlights some of the best: 2tor Inc., eduFire, Grockit, Inigral, and Knewton. I particularly love recent Yale graduate Richard Ludlow's newest creation, Academic Earth. Inspired by MIT's Open Courseware and Hulu's innovate web-based TV design, this site brings together video lectures and other academic content, creating a free, online "educational ecosystem." Other open courseware models, such as Peer2Peer and Western Governors University, allow students to share information online and even receive a fully-accredited degree from their laptop. Kamenetz concludes, "we've gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance." And in Chris Anderson's Free model, once something (ie. information, content) becomes abundant, it become "too cheap to meter."

However, Kamenetz omits one glaring hole in these new models, relationships, which will always be scarce (because they're based on the scarcity of time). Before going on about the vitality of relationships in education, let me digress for a bit. Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's latest book, Remix, is brilliant. His main argument is that our copyright laws are antiquated - why is it okay to quote Hemingway in your English paper, but illegal to repurpose Sam Wood's Hollywood version of "For Whom The Bell Tolls"? Yoko Ono certainly makes a valid claim that "permission was vital, legally" for a British artist to use John Lennon's music as she recreated his art by showing how others consume it, but why?

The central thesis in Lessig's Remix, and my argument in Remixing Education, is that as we consume one form of culture - be it literature, music, video, or other - we are recreating something else entirely. Our brains are wired to do that (see a future blog on the neuroscience of learning). Our experience, our interpretation of culture - and I include education explicitly here - is different for each of us. How we consume it - how we talk about it, express it, and repurpose it - is vital to our unique understanding of it. What is education but the recreation and dissemination of previous information for a democratic purpose? Lessig continues, "It is how lawyers argue. It is how we all talk all the time. We don't notice it as such, because this text-based remix, whether in writing or conversation, is as common as dust." The hundreds of open-source, open-content sites out there (see Flatworld Knowledge, AcaWiki, Community College Open Textbook Project) are the future of education. And this new remixing of education - hacking, editing, recreating - is the best way to share and spread knowledge in a fully digitized, democratized society.

Back to my original argument with Kamenetz's article, it's missing the relationships - the part of the puzzle that educators, especially those rooted in progressive, cognitive research - know is at the heart of good education systems. Tutorpedia believes in the power of free, open-source, online content, and we will soon publish our own "Curriculum Commons" where tutors, teachers, and professors can publish their content free on our site, increasing their own audience and reputation. But relationships matter, and the best learning will only happen when these authors (or others) have the opportunity to teach that material themselves, either 1-on-1 or through small workshops.

I'll wait for another blog entry to expand on the advantages of relationships that are built through personal mentoring, coaching, and tutoring. Suffice it to say, as this new wave of technology improves education, it is vital to remember the value of these relationships. Our new Tao of Tutorpedia (coming soon!) will promote the value of the internet, but also the value of personal relationships, to increase knowledge, understanding, and support. Human interaction can never be replaced, but only enhanced, by the power of the Internet.

Intrinsic Value

For many college-bound students, school is often just a means to an end. Students (and parents) may believe and understand why school is important, but that belief and understanding is an abstract ideal. On the day-to-day level, the experience of going to school can often be more drudgery than enjoyment. Yet, millions of students endure their school experience, holding fast to the idea that this, somehow, will pay off later. The thought process goes something like this: doing well in school will allow you to get into a good college, which will then allow you to find a high-paying job and comfortable life.

This line of thinking is unarguably correct, but it leaves something enormous out of the equation - the intrinsic value of learning. And this is a terrible shame. Both because learning has a great deal of intrinsic worth, and because when we enjoy what we're doing, we tend to be much more successful at it.

Alfie Kohn, in his book The Schools Our Children Deserve (p.119), gives us four reasons for the purpose of schools, set up on a 2x2 matrix that looks like this:

	Private	Public
Humanistic	Enhancing Personal Fulfillment	Building a Democratic Society
Economic	Maximizing Competitive Financial Success	Increasing Corporate Profits

This matrix is potentially illuminating. We see that the institution of school simultaneously operates at and serves several different levels and interests. Too often, though, the "economic" purposes are what are defined as important, and the "humanistic" interests are largely relegated to the bottom of the list when our kids ask why do I have to do this?

Kohn's "economic" reasons for schooling point towards this idea of schooling as a means to an end - places of learning, in this light, are places that set up and maintain the basic rules of society, and that if we want to be successful in society, we need to learn and master those rules. Again, this is undeniably true. Almost nobody would deny the importance of a college education in today's economy, or the competitive advantage college graduates have when they enter the job market. Sadly, though, some of the "humanistic" reasons for schooling have gotten lost in the scramble towards college and a better economic life. It is tragic when students (and parents...and even teachers) attribute academic success, or even involvement in extracurriculuars, to the fact that "it will look good on college applications." This may be true, but to do something simply for the sake of resume-padding is to miss the point as to why it might look good on a resume in the first place.

Focusing on the economic purposes of school as justification for working hard is like focusing on the destination and not enjoying the journey. Instead of fiercely driving towards an end goal at the expense of the journey, maybe it would make more sense to focus on the journey itself, to believe and understand that every step along the way is one that has intrinsic value. Instead of putting primary importance on outcome, which has been most of our tendency, we should focus instead on process. That is, instead of being constantly driven towards the college acceptance letter, students should invest more fully in the things they are learning in school every day. Engagement with school on a private, humanistic level will make school a more enjoyable, fulfilling experience, and because of this it will yield higher levels of academic success, which in this light is more of a byproduct of the process of learning as opposed to a primary goal. Therefore, a refocusing towards that which is right in front of us would not only make students' immediate experiences with school more enjoyable, it would also ultimately increase their achievement, and in doing so increase their economic and societal viability. That is, concentrating on the process actually leads to a more favorable outcome, even (and especially) when we aren't even thinking about the outcome!

This is a difficult concept to swallow for the goal-directed thinker. And the institution of school in the Western world is, of course, quite goal directed. In order to properly refocus on the intrinsic value of learning, then, society would need to take a different approach to schooling. Here the 2,500 year old words of Lao Tzu might be of use:

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

-Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63

Therefore, reinvesting students in the intrinsic value of learning should be one of the most important parts of educators' jobs. This makes school a more enjoyable, positive, and fulfilling place, yes, but it also will ultimately lead to greater overall academic success. How to go about doing this? A start is to make learning real, relevant, and rigorous. Learning should connect to students' life experiences, and tell them something about themselves and their world. It should be challenging and push them, but not so hard that they grow discouraged. Teaching should not be a series of memorizations or test-taking tricks; teaching should cultivate sophisticated habits of mind and hone skills that are generalizable to many different contexts. In this way, learning won't just be a means to an end. Learning will have intrinsic value, and that value will in turn affect positive academic outcomes.

Free Education

What if education were free? What would it be like if students and families had free access to the best teachers, tutors, curriculum, and pedagogy in the world? Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine, argues in his new book that Free is the future of business, that every business that becomes digital eventually becomes free. Free is not new, but the rise of the Internet Age has created more Free models than ever before. Every two years, bandwidth, storage, and processing have doubled in speed and halved in cost. Lewis Straus, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1953-1958, saw this coming, and at the dawn of the Nuclear Age intuitively predicted that electricity would some day be "too cheap to meter." He was wrong (we still write checks to PG&E every month), but digital bits - replacing material atoms - have become cheap enough that web-based businesses can round down, effectively offering their content and distribution for free (Andersen lists 50 case studies at the end of his book). Google, his number one example, makes its multi-billion dollar fortune by giving away its products for free (think gmail, google docs, and its new Chrome browser), and collects cash - plenty of it - from advertisers.

Anderson gives two Free models of education: free online textbooks and free online lectures. Flatworld Knowledge offers their content free online (and many colleges and universities participate in their archived catalog). They only have business and economics books now, but math, science, humanities and social science textbooks are coming soon. University of California, Berkeley, and Massachussettes Institute of Technology both provide their lectures free online. MIT's Open Courseware offers entire courses - including lectures, exams, and notes - free online, and Berkeley's free webcasts have allowed professors like Dr. Richard Muller to achieve pseudo-celebrity status with his "Physics for Future Presidents" lectures, also freely available on YouTube.

But what if we could offer more? Tutorpedia is currently providing or is in the process of creating the following 10 services free of charge:

• free tutoring to low-income students (through our Supplemental Educational Services program)
  
• free tutoring donated to local school auctions (we've given away over 100 hours)
  
• free content/workshops online (see this summer's offering)
  
• free college advice online (here on our blog from our local college counseling experts)
  
• free teaching/academic resources (coming soon, but check out Envision Schools Project Exchange)
  
• free training manuals (coming soon)
  
• free SAT curriculum (coming soon, but check out VocabSushi and Grockit for SAT prep)
  
• free college application help (coming soon)
  
• free college essay help (coming soon)
  
• free consultation with Founding Director
  

Free is the future of business, and Tutorpedia is interested in creating a Free model of Education - to close the achievement gap, improve access to college, and teach better life skills and habits of mind. Our hope is to create exciting, alternative, enriching content that parents, teachers, and students will use online (for free). Then, if and when you want that material taught to you by an expert, we're just a phone call or email away. Our tutors will continue to provide the collaborative relationships, innovative expertise, and holistic vision to do just that.

College Roundtable, Part 2

We had a great response to our first College Roundtable, and I'm happy to post answers to our second Roundtable question from four new local college experts:

Research shows that students undergo a sort of "brain drain" over the summer. Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in math over the summer months, and low-income students - despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains - also lose more than two months in reading. Given this distressing data, what suggestions do you give students about how to stay engaged and academically active over the summer months? Keeping an eye specifically on college, what should seniors be doing while school is out?

David Montsano, College Match
Based on data showing that students lose two months of learning over the summer in math and in reading, it makes sense to stem the tide of this “brain drain” with a strategy for summer brain maintenance. Many of the students that I coach find that doing an intellectual project during the summer helps stem the tide from brain drain toward a summer spent actively learning.

Rising seniors might use the summer to practice for the SAT in the fall or do a capstone project. These types of activities should help reinforce concepts learned from class work during the previous year as well as provide much needed intellectual spark to avoid the summer doldrums brought by too much tv watching and video games. My advice is for students to find an area of academic passion that they can build a project around. One way to find this is to ask themselves, if I had 30 hours to research something, what would it be? So for example if a student is passionate about food and organics and also likes chemistry, there may be a project around testing organically grown food in different environments—at the grocery store, at an organic food store and at farmers markets. A summer research project while not exactly the same as work done during the school year helps keep the student engaged, provides an opportunity to flex intellectual muscles and sharpens the mind. Colleges like it too.

Kim Glenchur, Choices to College

Summertime for seniors is a busy time. First, academic skills must be at least maintained:

• Savor literature instead of rushing through chapters to complete an English assignment. Entering "summer reading list" into a web browser will draw up numerous suggestions from many reputable organizations. Most books on these lists will be found in public libraries.
• Manipulate math problems. The web browser can also look up "summer math activities high school." Cool Math Sites are among several options at all levels of math proficiency.
• Begin college applications, specifically prep for standardized tests (if not done yet) and write essays. Applications begin to appear around July. Working on them over the summer will reduce stress when classes restart in the fall. For low-income students, federal government TRIO programs were created to address issues of college access. Click on this link for more information: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html. .

Second, identifying college selection criteria begins with self-knowledge. Though maintaining academic skills are vital, for purposes of college, rising seniors should try to participate in a summer activity that tests a favorite interest. Exploring it provides insight into whether to continue that interest to the next level in college. A good activity provides a fair test of that interest or even of related interests. Ideally, active hands-on learning supplements viewing experiences. The exploration process may also identify which colleges offer environments to further develop that interest -- a compelling reason to apply to a particular college. High school teachers, faculty club sponsors, and counselors are excellent information resources.

College applications commonly ask students about their previous summers. Note that an activity need not be costly. For example, one need not travel overseas to engage in a community service project, particularly if numerous local organizations need assistance. Do not discount the experiences gained from employment. Using a web browser to list "high school summer programs" will find over a billion options. Many of these programs will be offered at colleges and universities. Please be aware that attendance during an institution's summer session will not guarantee freshman admission.

Barry Beach, Arts Counselor

For students interested in studying art in college, the summer before their senior year is an important opportunity to take extracurricular art courses. As most students expecting to study art in college will be required to submit a portfolio of their work during the application process, summer is one of the best times to try a new kind of art to expand your portfolio.

Most students have taken drawing/painting courses, but trying more specialized courses in photography, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, etc. are good ideas. Liking a new course can highlight another major to consider. And not liking can be equally important - knowing what not to major in.

Pre-college programs are great for portfolio building, as they give prospective college students a taste of college life and an intense schedule of art-making. However, community colleges and local art centers usually offer numerous choices as well, and tend to be more affordable. One advantage of attending a pre-college program is the ability to select one at the college a prospective student is interested in attending. We artists are usually tactile people, so visiting and experiencing a place is important in the college narrowing process.

Marita Surace, College Applications Advisors

The first thing that comes to mind is preparing for the SAT/ACT (assuming a fall re-take or initial test), as well as keeping the mind in active mode. The best way to do this is to Read - A LOT - with a dictionary close by. Preferably, the reading would be focused on the classics - there are some terrific books that have stood the test of time and they contain many great SAT words and should keep the mind active for reading comprehension on the standardized tests. One could search online for lists of the 100 Greatest Books for High School or College Bound Students, or just walk into a library and ask a librarian for a recommendation at the reference desk. Many libraries have printed lists. Some libraries also have summer reading programs, where a student is rewarded with a free paperback.

An idea for writing would be to journal in any kind of notebook - every day. It keeps the thoughts and words flowing for that ultimate "College Essay" plus the SAT/ACT writing component, and starts the self-reflection process about goals for college. Teenage summers can often be very special and it could also end up as a wonderful longtime keepsake. My other recommendation would be to tutor others in Math. This could be done as a part-time job or on a volunteer basis. We actually learn subjects better when we teach them to others. Older students would benefit by tutoring younger ones in Algebra and Geometry, perhaps younger students who are repeating a class in summer school. This will keep the content fresh for Seniors for the test, and they will be able to list a "meaningful summer activity" on their college application.

I hate to focus so much on the SAT/ACT, but it currently is a reality of the college admission process. However, there will be great knowledge gained by the student, so maybe if they can think of it as self-education for life and not test prep, these activities may seem more interesting. I know that this is such an idealistic answer. If only the video game companies could create games around classic books and geometry, and engage teens educationally like they did with the Wii for exercise! At least that was a good start.

Alternative Education: Raising Global Students

In today's age of standardized assessments and high-stakes testing, we seem to be sending the wrong message. How do we teach kids that learning goes beyond what they can bubble in on a piece of paper? We all know students learn differently, at different paces, come from different educational backgrounds, and have different needs, interests, and passions, and these all affect how well they do in school. So what are alternative was to teach students, to engage them, to instill in them a love of learning, to give them the skills (rather than the content) so they can keep learning after school ends and after their tutor returns home. What else can we put in their tool kit to encourage a deeper understanding, to show them how to ask the right questions, and how to find the answers on their own? In today's globalized society, how can we raise more "global students"?

A family in Oregon had a bold idea. Maya and Tom Frost sold their house, moved to Mexico, and truly engaged their students in a different model of education. USA Today chronicled the story in a fascinating Q&A: "We wanted our kids to develop full-tilt flexibility, so we sold everything and left our suburban lifestyle behind to have a last-blast family adventure abroad. We didn't have a ton of money, so we had to get creative and figure out how to work virtually while ushering four teenage girls through high school and into college in non-traditional ways... None of them ever submitted an SAT score or took an AP or IB class. They are flourishing -- and financially independent." All four daughters graduated college early, saved thousands by enrolling in high school and college concurrently, and had internships, research projects, and mentoring all over Latin America. Maya calls this the "bold school" approach - opting out of the traditional path and blazing your own trail.

Homeschooling is also picking up steam. Parents homeschool for a variety of reasons, from academic to social to being in line with their family values. It allows for more flexibility and more focus on the interests of their children. Sometimes classes aren't challenging enough, and they want to supplement the school work with their own academic activities. Sometimes kids get too caught up in social activities - or are bullied or left out - and having the control over the social environment at home is crucial. Being able to create your own curriculum, test it and engage your child in ways you know are best, winds up being a great solution for many parents.

With the economy transforming the workforce more than any time in 70 years, parents are coming up with creative ways to educate their global students. A tutor just reminded me of a good quote from Thomas Edison: "The teacher has not taught until the learner as learned." We've always thought of the teacher as the person at the front of the class; maybe now it's time to think of the teacher in different ways.

Stay Engaged over the Summer

School is out but that doesn't mean you can't stay engaged and active over the summer. I've been meeting cool people with great ideas about how to do this. The guys at eduFire want to revolutionize the way we learn with online video classes and tutoring for any language and test you can imagine. Shmoop wants to do away with textbooks (who doesn't?!) and create a more vivid, multimedia curriculum for students and teachers. And if you're in the need of fun SAT games, check out Grockit, a more collaborative way to learn online.

Don't succumb to brain drain. Summer is a chance to learn in non-traditional ways. Gone are your teachers and set curriculum for the year; gone is the rigidity of grades, homework, and tests. What the summer presents is a golden opportunity to create your own academic learning - to discover and experience what interests you. Go to a museum, get an internship, work a part-time job, travel, spend time at a non-profit, spend time with a venture capitalist, volunteer at a local hospital, soup kitchen, or summer camp.

Of course there's good ol' fashioned tutoring as well. For students who need to make up classes or get ahead for the fall, there's nothing better than a 1-1 tutor and mentor. Along with Tutorpedia, Meyers Learning Center is creating individual workshops and summer learning plans for students who want to learn in more creative, personal ways. But whatever your summer plans, be sure to mix in a little bit of relaxation with a little bit of learning.